The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus yesterday blasted New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), saying that the mayor’s inaction over the “En En case” was a move to shield New Taipei City Department of Health Director Chen Jun-chiu (陳潤秋).
The controversy is over the April 19 death of a two-year-old boy known as “En En” (恩恩). The child’s father said that the “119” hotline allegedly took too long — 81 minutes — to respond to his call for help.
It was the nation’s first death of a child resulting from COVID-19.
In a statement earlier yesterday, Hou said he felt the pain of En En’s parents, and that he would reflect on the incident and accept full responsibility.
DPP caucus secretary-general Chen Ou-po (陳歐珀) said in a news release that the city’s Department of Health had on June 10 said it was “unable to provide a voice recording” of the call.
Chen Ou-po called Chen Jun-chiu’s response a cover-up, saying that Hou’s statement yesterday of “taking responsibility” was equally meaningless as he had not even apologized for the incident.
Hou’s response is not as humble as it seems given the information that has come to light, DPP Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said, adding that since En En’s death, Hou’s image has been that of the cold, formulaic bureaucrat, citing judicial prosecution and demonstrating a total lack of empathy.
“Hou’s comments today still lack the one thing the child’s parents and the public wish to hear: an apology,” Lo said.
Hou is not protecting the hotline operators, but Chen Jun-chiu, a favored civil servant who has yet to face the issue, Lo added.
DPP Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵), deputy secretary-general of the caucus, said online polls had found that 66 percent of respondents felt Hou should take responsibility for the entire incident, while 6.3 percent said the city’s health department should and 0.2 percent said the New Taipei City Fire Department should.
Hou and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) have kept politicizing the incident, Lin said.
“The incident has never been about politics, but about a person’s life,” she added.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods