A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon.
The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.”
They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023.
Photo: CNA
The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the older sister Liu Tsai-hsuan (劉彩萱), a legally accredited home-based foster carer in Taipei. She and her younger sister Liu Juo-lin (劉若琳) often took care of the children in their care together, said prosecutors.
To prevent incident, about 15 police officers were dispatched to the scene. Many people lined up to enter the court to observe the hearing, and no outbursts were reported.
During the hearing, the defendants asked going forward for witnesses to be separated from the public gallery by a screen to reduce the pressure on those giving testimony.
The prosecutors stated that foreign nationals who had employment relations with the two sisters can testify, but considering the older sister has attempted to influence others’ statements, they asked that witnesses be housed in a different place to the defendants in court.
At the end of the hearing, the presiding judge thanked the public for keeping order in the court and refraining from bringing slogans and white flowers into the courtroom.
Citizen judges for the case will be selected and the trial will begin on April 22.
Sentencing in the case is expected to be handed down May 13.
After the hearing, as the sisters were taken out in a prison van, some enraged members of the crowd threw food at the vehicle.
A legal professional said that potential citizen judges could be intimidated by the crowd.
In response to the crowd’s appeals, a Ministry of Justice official said the law has already been amended to increase punishments for child abuse.
Whether the law will be further amended will be discussed, with due consideration given to any suggestions and opinions from the public, the official said.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS