|
Control Yuan asked to probe March 24 eviction
By Alison Hsiao / Staff reporter
Students hold protest signs outside the Control Yuan in Taipei yesterday as they submit a petition to impeach Premier Jiang Yi-huah and National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun.
Photo: CNA
A group of students, academics and lawyers yesterday filed a complaint with the Control Yuan, calling for the watchdog to discipline public servants who broke the law by authorizing excessive use of force to disperse anti-service trade protesters from the Executive Yuan last week.
Some of the students involved are also behind a petition calling for the impeachment of Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and National Police Agency (NPA) Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) over police violence.
The petition was launched on Sunday via a Facebook event page titled: “Impeach Jiang and Wang. You can’t get away easily after offending the people.”
As of last night, more than 2,000 students and others have signed the petition and the page had been “liked” by more than 7,000 people.
“Since Jiang and Wang are not willing to admit fault [for the violent crackdown on Monday last week], we are asking the constitutional mechanism to fulfill its purpose, and urge it to impeach the premier and officials who have ordered state violence, and neglected the nation and public’s interests in passing the service trade pact with China,” said Kenny Lin (林凱衡), a graduate student of sociology at National Taiwan University and one of the initiators of the petition.
The Cabinet headed by Jiang violated various laws when the police evicting the students hit them with batons, poked them with shields and used water cannons, the students said.
“What the police did was clearly in violation of the rule of proportionality on the use of force by police as stipulated in the Police Power Exercise Act (警察職權行使法),” National Taiwan University law student Lai You-hao (賴又豪) said.
“The Act Governing the Use of Police Weapons (警械使用條例) also states that ‘police should avoid using lethal force unless the situation is so imminent that the lives of officers or bystanders are being threatened’ — an article that police on March 24 did not abide by when they bludgeoned protesting students and citizens on the head,” he said.
The group also asked the Control Yuan to hold Jiang and Cabinet agencies accountable and penalize them for dereliction of duty by perfunctorily passing the draft of the service trade agreement, a pact that could greatly influence Taiwanese lives and rights, without carefully investigating and evaluating its potential impact.
source: Taipei Times
|
