The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld an earlier ruling that army personnel were responsible for the death of Hung Wen-pu (洪文璞), a conscript who committed suicide after being bullied, and said that Hung’s parents should receive NT$2.86 million (US$94,483) in compensation from Army Command Headquarters.
The compensation was increased from the NT$1.97 million ordered in the first ruling at the district court.
However, yesterday’s ruling can be appealed.
In the first trial, the district court found platoon leader Hao Cheng (郝錚), Hung’s immediate superior when he served at Army Command Headquarters in 2008, guilty of physical abuse of a subordinate and sentenced Hao to one year in prison.
Several other army officers, non-commissioned officers and others who were found to have been involved in bullying Hung received demerits or were given cautions.
Hung killed himself by jumping off of a building at a training camp in Nantou County in August 2008.
Hung’s mother went public about her son’s death in 2014, when she railed against Hung’s unit for bullying him and contributing to his suicide, complaining that Army Command Headquarters and Ministry of National Defense officials has colluded in covering up his death.
Hung had earned a master’s degree in physics from National Taiwan University before being called up in March 2008 to begin his mandatory military service when he was 27.
He was assigned to work at the accounting office of the Army Command Headquarters.
His mother said Hung had told her that he was the target of bullying, with his superiors often criticizing him and saying things like: “You have an advanced university degree, but you cannot even perform simple tasks,” “You are an idiot ! How many times do we have to teach you how to do this work?”
“He received vicious verbal abuse so often that he broke down and cried during work at least six times,” she said.
An investigation by prosecutors determined that Hung suffered from depression and emotional problems from the abuse and verbal bullying, which sometimes came in the form of threats against Hung.
The courts ruled that the verbal abuse had directly contributed to Hung being unable to cope with the distress, and led to commit suicide.
In the first ruling, the court heard from testimony that prior to entering the military, Hung was known as a jovial, friendly, open-minded guy.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
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. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
RSS