The Garden of Hope Foundation yesterday called for immediate intervention to ban a computer game featuring real-life simulations of rape, sexual abuse and forced abortion now available on the Internet.
“It’s unbelievable that such a rapist training ‘game’ exists and it’s even more unbelievable that the government is not acting more quickly to prosecute the dealer and the online platform that sells it,” Garden of Hope Foundation executive director Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) told a press conference in Taipei.
The computer game, developed in Japan, allows players to pick their own “targets” — female characters — from a list at the beginning of the game. The players can thenact as rapists in real-life scenes — they may follow the targets of their choice, humiliate them, rape them or even train them as sex slaves.
A player may invite other players over the Internet to join a gang rape, or force the victim in the game to have an abortion.
“This is not just a controversial game, it’s a crime,” Chi said.
AUCTION SITES
While the game is not legally imported into the country, it can be bought at online auction sites such as Ruten or Yahoo Auctions.
“The game was banned on US online store Amazon.com in February because of the overwhelming number of complaints made about it and some members of the UK parliament have also urged the Amazon site in the UK to remove the product,” Chi said. “Only in Taiwan can the game easily be purchased on Yahoo or Ruten.”
Garden of Hope specialist Wang Shu-fen (王淑芬) said it was also shocking that she was able to buy a copy of the game online using her eight-year-old son’s account.
After the foundation’s call for a ban, Yahoo had removed copies of the game from its auction site. However, some sellers resubmitted the game for sale after changing its title.
Wang quoted a Ruten official surnamed Lee (李) as saying that the firm would put the game in its adult section, but would not completely remove it unless instructed to do so by the relevant authorities.
POLICE PROBE
Lee Hsi-ho (李西河), a captain in the Criminal Investigation Bureau’s Ninth Investigation Brigade, which specializes in Internet crime, said yesterday the police had already begun their investigation process, but declined to reveal details.
“We can’t say whether the seller or the online auction sites are guilty of any crime, because that’s a job for prosecutors — we can only gather as much information as possible and send it to the prosecutors’ office,” Lee said.
Ruten’s spokeswoman did not return a Taipei Times’ request for comment.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,