hello
i live in tainan and woke up to the police aggressively buzzing my door. a little groggy i stumbled down the four flights of stairs and was asked several question as to my whereabouts on 3-19 between 12:00pm-
2:00pm. had to provide an alibi which was then confirmed by my employer. i also had to sign a form as well as show my passport. the policeman was a captain and he had a big old list of foreigner names on it.
we chewed the fat for awhile and he said that it was part of the investigation. perhaps so but maybe just a way to confirm the adrs of every foreigner in city. anyone been interrogated?
More than a whiff of “rounding up the usual suspects”.
I haven’t heard from the cops yet.
i found it to be very strange-even stranger was the fat list o’foreigners. anyways my coworkers as well as boss enjoyed the drama.
Well, now I have heard from the cops.
At 11:30 A.M. today I was summoned before a policeman to state my whereabouts on the afternoon of the shooting. I didn’t have to do much talking, as my landlord had already explained to the officer that I was usually at home at that time of day (which I was). So the police officer simply had me sign a statement affirming my alibi. He had in his hands a thick sheet of papers listing the names and residences of all the foreigners in Tainan. So apparently the police here are “rounding up the usual suspects.” This is quite odd. Do they seriously suspect some disaffected engineer or English teacher (the only kinds of foreigners in Tainan) was involved in a conspiracy to shoot the President? That wouldn’t make any sense for several reasons, most obviously the fact that we stick out like sore thumbs and are stared at often in crowds - not exactly good conditions to slip undercover of a crowd and fire off a couple of shots, when plenty of eyes are on the weird foreigner. The fact that the officer was pretty perfunctory about the visit (it took about 3 minutes, and most of that was them explaining what they wanted to me - he just wanted my quick signature and then I was off, not even questions for me; I guess my landlord had already answered them while they were waiting for me to come down the stairs) makes it look like perhaps they are desperate for leads to the identity of the shooter, any leads, and are going through the motions to look like they’re serious by pursuing any blind alleys they can think of. Like I said - rounding up the usual suspects.
Well there ya go. Tainan and Dallas have more in common than we ever would have imagined…
[quote=“regishater”]hello
I live in Tainan and woke up to the police aggressively buzzing my door. a little groggy i stumbled down the four flights of stairs and was asked several question as to my whereabouts on 3-19 between 12:00pm-
2:00pm. had to provide an alibi which was then confirmed by my employer. I also had to sign a form as well as show my passport. the policeman was a captain and he had a big old list of foreigner names on it.
we chewed the fat for awhile and he said that it was part of the investigation. perhaps so but maybe just a way to confirm the adrs of every foreigner in city. anyone been interrogated?[/quote]
I am sure glad I don’t live in Tainan as it sounds as if the police there have no idea what they are doing. Do they really believe that they will find the shooter, if there was a shooter, by going door-to-door looking for the guilty party?
Isn’t it possible that the shooter came from somewhere other than Tainan? Really, did the police not think of this?
Is it really likely that the shooter was a foreigner? I know that I can muster up more passion about when will America leave Iraq than I can about who will be leading Taiwan for the next 4 years.
Hopefully, the police in other parts of Taiwan have a better plan than to harrass the foreigners who want nothing more than to live a peaceful life in Taiwan.
shout out to ml for his support. thought i was going upriver. let us keep an eye on this one.
What are you guys talking about? The fact that they are checking everyone is good. I assume that they are asking Chinese too.
Give the police a break; they are only doing their job.
It occurs to me that, along with most Taiwanese policies to do with foreigners, Westerners are not their prime concern. A plausible scenario is that someone paid a poor (indepted) Indonesian manual labourer to take a pot-shot at the president. Give him a gun, a few thousand dollars, and a ticket back home and let someone else (untraceable back to you, of course) attempt to do your dirty work. Of course, the down-side of this plan is that you’re likely to end up with someone who’s never fired a gun before, so makes a complete botch of the job.
So maybe it is worth the police checking out to see if any foreigners disappeared on the 19th … it’s almost certainly a dead-end, but following up that sort of long-shot is what police work is all about (I believe).
part investigation part big brother we will never know. my alibi could have been full of holes. what is the point of these half-assed investigations. i really question their motives.
Chinese police “techniques” have always consisted of picking up someone they [b]want[/b] behind bars and then beating the shit out of him until he confesses. Detective work? Evidence? Just not very important. They can’t find their own asses with both hands. Remember the results of the murder “investigation” of the wife of the Converse Shoes executive in southern Taiwan about 6 years ago? What a sick joke.
Don’t know what the real motives of the police are in this, but it’s possibly a very good idea. Anyone been interviewed that was actually at the rally? What sort of questions stemmed from your being there? Foreign residents attending the rally would most likely have brought along a camera and would most likely have numerous pictures of proceedings, a Taiwanese style election rally is something to behold and not too common in the west! Pehaps this is one of the reasons they are questioning foreign residents, someone may have the money shot! Or maybe they’re just being typically Xenophobic
Kinda like after 9/11 when we all got letters in the mail from the FAP. Big Brother is kinda sorta watching us…
Have all the non foreigners in Tainan been interrogated?
Have any Americans been questioned?
I asked my foreign friend in Tainan about this and she had not been questioned. Maybe she wasn’t on the list but she has lived there for two years.
The police seem to be taking their time. About half the foreigners in Tainan have been talked to at this point, and the rest are waiting their turn. Just going be anecdotal evidence, of the people I’ve talked to around town.
Broonale - I am an American. Why do you ask? You think it was CIA?
My concern is that the police in Taiwan are world renown for using torture to get a confession. If Americans are being routinely questioned on a basis of evidence that is one thing.
If on the other hand they are being dragged down to the local cop shop and subjected to interrogations to merely send a message that is another matter all together.
I haven’t seen anything in the newspapers about it?
It may be that they are more interested in mainland Chinese… and just don’t want to say that out loud. Better to go and interview everybody than single them out and upset you-know-who.
Yes. It’s pretty obvious that the police are only “interrogating” waiguoren for appearances’ sake. My “interrogation” was all of three minutes and was all done by my landlord while they were waiting for me to get dressed - I just had to sign a paper and I was off.