A ninth-grade student in New Taipei City was on Monday stabbed several times in the neck and chest by another student at school and died the next day.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Thursday expressed her condolences to the student’s family on Facebook. She said the Ministry of Education was assisting the local health department in providing support to those affected, and that a cross-ministerial meeting would be held next week to discuss how to improve the nation’s social safety net.
During a televised policy presentation that night, the three presidential candidates expressed their condolences and presented their ideas on how to provide support for the student’s family, teachers and other students affected by the incident, and how to improve campus safety.
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) observed 10 seconds of silence for the victim, then asked how a student was able to bring a switchblade to school easily and said that ministries should think about how to form a better social safety net.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Vice President William Lai (賴清德) said the government would reflect on what could be improved to prevent similar incidents and vigorously enforce the “social security net 2.0” to patch up loopholes, adding that it should also provide continuous support to at-risk students and amend laws to familiarize them with counseling, so that students can seek help with mental health issues.
New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, said Taiwan should lower the minimum age at which a person is subject to criminal liability, while strengthening moral education and effectively punishing bullies.
The government also needs to cooperate with police to tackle campus bullying, ease the conditions for teachers to search students’ belongings and increase penalties on organized crime groups recruiting minors, Hou said.
While the candidates had different approaches to the issue, they offered positive and constructive suggestions to improve the social safety net and prevent similar incidents.
On the other hand, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) and some of the party’s legislators on Friday said that campus security issues and bullying occur due to Tsai and Lai’s lax policies.
Chu called DPP Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) the “loophole of campus security,” saying that her efforts to limit teachers’ authority to discipline and randomly search students cause such incidents.
The KMT in the past two years also labeled Fan “the loophole of disease prevention,” due to her speaking out for commercial airline staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chu is using the same script to turn people against the DPP, saying “if the DPP cannot solve the problem, then let the KMT do it.”
However, earlier this month, KMT legislators opposed the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s plan to set up a cloud surveillance system in infant and daycare centers, citing concerns for teachers’ and children’s privacy. The party’s stance on human rights and individual privacy issues is contradictory, as it seems to conveniently shift its view for political gain.
The question of how to ensure a balance between individual freedoms and security is complicated and worth debating, but politicians should not take advantage of public agitation for political gain. Such manipulation robs society of an opportunity for more meaningful and rational discussion.
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