A court on Thursday handed two Taiwanese men who ran a large cannabis farm in Taoyuan 11-year and nine-year sentences respectively, while six Indonesian migrant workers implicated in the incident were given sentences from 30 to 34 months, and would be deported after serving time.
The farm came to light in September last year when prosecutors in Taoyuan received a tip-off about the farm containing 4,218 plants, which they seized, next to the base of the Aviation Special Forces 601st Brigade.
Prosecutors said this was the largest number of cannabis plants ever confiscated, and that the cannabis plants had a market value of about NT$1.26 billion (US$41.14 million).
Photo courtesy of the police via CNA
The cannabis farm was set up by Taiwanese men surnamed Wu (吳) and Chen (陳) in 2021, the Taoyuan District Court said.
Chen later died, but the verdict did not specify when.
Wu funded the operation and provided technical guidance, while Chen was responsible for sourcing cannabis seeds, the verdict said.
A third Taiwanese man, surnamed Ko (柯), was employed to do hard labor, while six Indonesian migrant workers who had illegally left their employment were hired to tend to, harvest and process the plants, it said.
All eight suspects pleaded guilty.
Following an assessment of their involvement in the incident, the severity of their crimes and that they readily confessed, Wu and Ko were sentenced to 11 years and nine years respectively, it said.
The six migrant workers had not known they were hired to tend to cannabis plants, and had struggled to find new jobs after they realized that the job was illegal, it said.
They took part in the illegal activity because they had to support their families in Indonesia, which the court sympathized with and found sufficient to hand them reduced sentences ranging from 30 to 34 months, it said.
However, they would be deported after serving their time or after the remainder of their prison terms are waived, the court said.
The money paid to Ko for his illegal work, totaling NT$490,000, would be confiscated, it said.
Three of the Indonesians had not received any wages, while the other three received monthly salaries of NT$30,000, which would be partially confiscated, as they have to support their families, it said.
The ruling can be appealed.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching