Most of you have probably noticed that the Chen Shui-bian administration is exceedingly adept at patting themselves on the back especially when it comes to human rights. I don’t know how many photo-ops we’ve seen with Annette and A-bian hamming it up talking about how great human rights are in Taiwan. Press conferences don’t seem to have any effect on the Amnesty International reports.
Well, what I want to know is why, after the Council of Grand Justices (or Grant Justices as Taipei Times had in a recent photo caption) ruled random raids as unconstitutional, the government stepped in and gave the police a two-year grace period. I mean is the concept that difficult to comprehend?
I’m sure some of you have seen the recent articles in the Taipei Times about police raiding clubs (no presumption of innnocence here or for that matter probable cause) and forcing people to take urine tests and HIV tests. I didn’t know having HIV is a crime. Do all (assumed) criminals get tested or only people who go to dance clubs? Do they test for other diseases such as hepatitis, bacillary dysentery or dengue fever?
Is it possible that someone may have taken a drug elsewhere and and then test positive at the local police station, say after a trip to Hong Kong or Bali? (Singapore convicts people for drug use in countries outside of their jurisdiction.)
I understand that prosecutors here get convictions off of piss tests. Are those tests infallible? Geez, I guess the DPP will keep giving these media parties until one of their kids gets dragged down to the station. And if you refuse to take the test, do they take you to their favorite room, you know, the one with the telephone books and the stun guns?
Hey, when I used to be a mild-mannered professor, I was the only faculty member at my university who had to get an annual syphilis test as a condition of continued employment. And let me tell you, if I had to pick which faculty member would be most likely to be found in a supply closet with several underage students, I’d look around departments other than Foreign Languages first. At least I spent my trip to Thailand sightseeing…
Jellymister, I personally believe in the legalization (or at least decriminalization) of club drugs. But there is a public outcry in Taiwan for the authorities to clamp down hard on illicit drug use.
Contrary to what you implied, the police raids are not some DPP pet initiative. Mayor Ma has taken the same hard line, and remember that the police are under the dominion of the local government, not central. Given the public presure, any administration would do the same.
It’s obvious that the majority of patrons in certain clubs are partying on supplements; to argue otherwise is disingeunous. I think this alone constitutes “probable cause” in the eyes of the local authorities. The police raids and forced testing are in fact highly popular in the general population, even if they violate our standards of civil rights.