Legislators from across party lines yesterday blasted the Taipei Military Police for confiscating White Terror era-related documents seized in a search of a civilian’s residence.
The Legislative Yuan’s Foreign and National Defense Committee put aside its scheduled agenda to question officials over the affair, passed resolutions condemning the military police’s actions and demanded the preservation of all documents relating to the White Terror era.
“[The documents] were not classified and had already become historical documents,” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said, questioning whether their presence on an online auctioning site was urgent enough to justify military police acting directly instead of referring the case to a public prosecutor.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
“Even if investigations are allowed to be conducted without the permission of a prosecutor, personnel from the Ministry of Defense should not have gone with the military police to meet the suspect because they are not ‘judicial police,’” he said, adding that it appeared that the military police had abandoned their neutrality and followed ministry orders.
“The reason this has become such a huge issue is that a judicial and human rights red line has been crossed,” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said.
The ministry conducted a “scam operation” by pretending to want to purchase tea to “fish out” the man who posted the documents, Lo said, questioning whether the man had willingly assented to the military police searching his home.
Minister of Defense Kao Kuang-chi (高廣圻) apologized for the fear and controversy caused by the incident in response to demands from DPP Legislator Lu Sun-ling (呂孫綾) that he do so.
However, he denied that the ministry regularly monitors local Web sites and said that there had been no other similar incidents.
Numerous legislators demanded that all video footage of the encounter between the military police and the suspect, surnamed Wei (魏), and the documents be preserved and released to the public.
New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) said the incident showed that the government was keeping tabs on its own citizens.
“There is no way I can believe the Ministry of Defense statements that personnel ‘just happened’ to see the documents,” he said. “The reason they saw them was not because ministry personnel were surfing the Internet at work and went to an auction site to make a purchase.”
At a news conference, other NPP legislators said they were shocked by the involvement of intelligence personnel in directing the military police’s response, calling for reforms to be enacted that would clearly define the military police’s powers.
“This is not just rash behavior by the military police — there is an intelligence organization that regularly monitors online activity and sends in the military police if it finds something,” NPP Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said after ministry officials refused to say how many ministry employees are responsible for monitoring the Internet.
Hong Kong-based American singer-songwriter Khalil Fong (方大同) has passed away at the age of 41, Fong’s record label confirmed yesterday. “With unwavering optimism in the face of a relentless illness for five years, Khalil Fong gently and gracefully bid farewell to this world on the morning of February 21, 2025, stepping into the next realm of existence to carry forward his purpose and dreams,” Fu Music wrote on the company’s official Facebook page. “The music and graphic novels he gifted to the world remain an eternal testament to his luminous spirit, a timeless treasure for generations to come,” it said. Although Fong’s
China’s military buildup in the southern portion of the first island chain poses a serious threat to Taiwan’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply, a defense analyst warned. Writing in a bulletin on the National Defense and Security Research’s Web site on Thursday, Huang Tsung-ting (黃宗鼎) said that China might choke off Taiwan’s energy supply without it. Beginning last year, China entrenched its position in the southern region of the first island chain, often with Russia’s active support, he said. In May of the same year, a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) force consisting of a Type 054A destroyer, Type 055 destroyer,
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was questioned by prosecutors for allegedly orchestrating an attack on a taxi driver after he was allegedly driven on a longer than necessary route in a car he disliked. The questioning at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office was ongoing as of press time last night. Police have recommended charges of attempted murder. The legally embattled actor — known for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代) — is under a separate investigation for allegedly using fake medical documents to evade mandatory military service. According to local media reports, police said Wang earlier last year ordered a
Taiwan is planning to expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based X-ray imaging to customs clearance points over the next four years to curb the smuggling of contraband, a Customs Administration official said. The official on condition of anonymity said the plan would cover meat products, e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, large bundles of banknotes and certain agricultural produce. Taiwan began using AI image recognition systems in July 2021. This year, generative AI — a subset of AI which uses generative models to produce data — would be used to train AI models to produce realistic X-ray images of contraband, the official
RSS