Seven protesters who were injured during a crackdown on demonstrations against a Chinese envoy's visit to Taiwan earlier this month filed lawsuits alleging police brutality yesterday.
The seven who were involved in four cases of alleged police brutality showed medical documents, photographs and video recordings of their injuries and how they were injured during a news conference in front of National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall in Taipei before submitting their cases to Taipei District Court.
“I was talking with some friends on the sidewalk across a small street from a side entrance of the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei [on the night of Nov. 5],” said Huang Yi-ling (黃怡翎), one of the plaintiffs.
At the time, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), was at a dinner banquet hosted by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) at the hotel.
As demonstrators surrounded the hotel, the guests were unable to leave until a little past 2am when some 2,000 police officers dispersed the crowd by force.
“When we got there at around 9:30pm, the area was still quiet. But about an hour later, a large number of police officers showed up,” Huang said. “One officer was saying something through a speaker from across the street, and we couldn't hear it very well, so we asked ‘are you talking to us?’”
The police did not answer, and the next thing Huang and her friends knew, they were being pushed back by officers using their shields, she said.
“It was quite strange, because the officers didn't push us away, instead they pushed us against the wall and started beating us with their batons,” Huang said, adding that she and her friends kept pleading for the officers to stop and yelling that there was no way out behind them, “but they continued for quite some time.”
Another plaintiff, Ted Chiang (江一德), said he turned his back to the riot police who were trying to disperse the crowd in front of the hotel, hoping to stop further physical clashes.
However, a video clip showed that he was pulled behind the police line.
“After I got pulled in, I fell on the ground, and the police officers hit me with batons and shields,” Chiang said.
“I just wanted to run away from the madness, but an officer hit my head with his baton, then I started bleeding all over,” he said, holding up a T-shirt with bloodstains and holes that he wore that night.
“To this day, I still feel dizzy and am still taking medicine,” he said.
Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正), executive director of the Judicial Reform Foundation, who helped organize a panel of attorneys to provide assistance to the victims of alleged police brutality, said: “It's very disappointing that the police have only looked into cases in which officers were attacked and tried to find out who attacked them while turning a blind eye to cases in which innocent citizens were wounded.”
“While [President] Ma Ying-jeou [馬英九] has constantly said that the ‘the problem [with demonstrations] is the violence,’ I would like to remind him that there is also the problem of police violence,” he said.
At a separate setting yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Chou Wei-you (周威佑) accused the Taipei City Police Department of framing him — and possibly other protesters — by putting him on a list of violent protesters during Chen's visit.
The department issued a booklet of photos of 66 “violent protesters” on Wednesday and called on the public to help the police in identifying suspects who allegedly took part in the demonstrations.
The photo of Chou, who was allegedly punched in the left eye by an officer while he was protesting against Chen in front of the hotel, was in the booklet put together by the police on Wednesday morning, but the department removed his photo yesterday after the councilor challenged its inclusion.
“If the police department believes I am a suspect, then it is covering me by removing my photo. If not, did the department include my photo by mistake?” Chou said.
Chou later showed a video clip of the incident in front of the hotel that night to prove that he did not attack the police and that he was punched by an officer in the eye while trying to separate the police and protesters.
He and other DPP Taipei City councilors condemned the department's Songshan Precinct for lying about what happened that night by arguing that Chou was hit by a bottle of water, rather than by an officer, in its news release.
In response, Lee Wen-chang (李文章), deputy chief of the department's Criminal Investigation Division, said that the police hurt Chou by accident, adding that Chou's photo was included in the booklet by mistake because “the staff member who handled the booklet did not know it was Councilor Chou.”
Calling in question the department's handling of the aftermath of the protests, Chou urged Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) to look into the department's conduct.
“How many suspects in the booklet are innocent and treated unjustly like me? Such poor handling of the incident is a serious breach of human rights,” Chou said.
Putting handcuffs on his own hands, Chou said he refused to enjoy any privilege as a councilor and vowed to file a lawsuit against the police department.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Liu Yao-ren (劉耀仁) urged the public to provide evidence, such as photographs or videotapes showing police taking part in violence against the protesters and to file lawsuits against the police.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
RSS