Police have identified 2,734 people implicated in stalking or related crimes over the past three years, and stepped up patrols and officer training in preparation for the June enactment of a stalking prevention law.
After years of debate, the Legislative Yuan in December last year passed the Stalking and Harassment Prevention Act (跟蹤騷擾防制法), which is to go into effect on June 1.
Earlier in 2019, the National Police Agency instituted a plan to combat stalking, which included compiling monthly data on cases at risk of repeat offense.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of the Interior
The agency said that 2,734 people were implicated in stalking or related crimes between July 2019 and December last year.
Of those, 1,543 cases (56.4 percent) were classified as sexual harassment, while 619 (22.4 percent) were cases of domestic violence, although those cases after January 2020 were reclassified as a more serious criminal offense under the Domestic Violence Prevention Act (家庭暴力防治法) and therefore are no longer included in the agency’s stalking statistics.
About 8.7 percent, or 239 people, were implicated over contraventions of criminal law, such as coercion, indecent exposure, assault or offenses against privacy.
The agency also found 189 cases of workplace discrimination, 76 contraventions of social order — such as stalking “without justifiable reasons,” peeping or other unexplained harassment — and 59 cases of discrimination under educational law.
Under the new law, stalking is defined as behavior intended to repeatedly exert “anything sexual or gender-related toward a specific person against his/her will, which intimidates such specific person and sufficiently affects his/her daily life or social activities.”
It also lists eight activities that would constitute stalking.
Under the new law, police are authorized to issue a protective order if an initial warning is ignored within two years. A perpetrator could then be arrested if the order is contravened, with the option for preventive detention if approved by a court.
To ease the transition when the new law goes into effect, the agency said it would continue following its 2019 plan, and advise precincts on how to handle cases under current and future laws on an individual basis.
It also vowed to review incident hotspots and times of day when reports are made, and step up patrols accordingly, while also expanding regular patrols to include known harassers.
Since there is considerable overlap of domestic violence, social order, harassment and other types of incidents, the agency said it is working to improve officers’ familiarity with the new law and when to apply it.
For example, in New Taipei City, the number of sexual harassment cases decreased by nearly 10 percent between 2020 and last year, while the number of related criminal offenses such as coercion and obstruction of freedom increased by 11.3 percent, the agency said.
This shows that officers are gaining a better understanding of the nature of stalking and harassment, it said.
Officers’ newly instituted ability to issue protective orders and pre-emptively detain perpetrators is also expected to greatly reduce incidents and “fill in the last piece of gendered violence prevention,” it added.
Additional reporting by Hsu Kuo-chen
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
RSS