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“[The documents] were not classified and had already become historical documents,” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said, questioning whether their presence on an online auctioning site was urgent enough to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.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS