Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Brian Hioe
A MASS STABBING INCIDENT that killed three and injured eleven has shocked Taiwan. The attacker, Chang Wen, later killed himself in an apparent suicide after falling from the roof of the Eslite Spectrum Nanxi in Taipei, with the injured or killed mostly in the vicinity of Taipei Main Station or Zhongshan.
What has shocked Taiwanese society has not only been the senseless nature of the random acts of violence committed by Chang Wen, but the calculated way that this was carried out. Chang Wen planned the attack for well over a year in advance, obtaining weapons that he later used in his attacks, such as smoke bombs, as well as body armor. Police are still tracking Chang Wen’s finances, as well as where he sourced the weaponry that he used.
Some criticisms of the police have taken place for failing to stop Chang Wen’s attack, seeing as Chang Wen switched disguises five times in order to avoid detection. Since the attack, police have announced that they would be stepping up patrols, particularly ahead of celebrations for the new year.
In particular, there is concern about copycat attacks. Chang Wen himself reportedly sought to mimic the metro stabbing committed by Chang Chieh in 2014. After the stabbing incident, an online threat later traced to a student in Kaohsiung claimed to be from an individual part of the same “organization” as Chang, and that similar attacks would continue. Police currently believe that the Chang Wen attack was likely a lone wolf incident, though Chang’s motives are still unclear.
A number of different measures have been proposed in the wake of the killings. There have been some calls for further securitization in society, including that purchasers of smoke bombs should be registered in the future, or that AI surveillance should be used to make society safer.
Still, one notes that such measures are unlikely to solve the root of the problem. It seems a paltry solution to introduce a registration system whenever a new product is weaponized for a violent incident. Even so, it is true that Taiwan’s unregulated online shopping ecosystem has made it easy to purchase items that can be weaponized, without much in the way of security measures.
To this extent, it proves dangerous when violent incidents contribute to personal freedoms being turned over to the state, whether in the form of AI surveillance or otherwise. Digital tools such as AI surveillance should raise privacy concerns, as well as concerns about whether such data can itself be weaponized by the state. Such data, in the hands of the Taiwanese state with its poor cybersecurity practices, could also potentially end up in Chinese hands.
Politicians such as Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim have called for a stronger social safety net to prevent the recurrence of such incidents. This is probably the right approach. At the same time, one expects calls from the KMT and other proponents of capital punishment that the death penalty be employed more often, as a deterrence to violent crime.
Indeed, such punitive and legalistic approaches have been observed in the past, mostly for the sake of politicking. After the Cheng Chieh metro stabbings in 2014, the KMT Ma administration expedited executing Cheng, so as to shore up its approval rating after the fallout from the Sunflower Movement that March. The Tsai and Lai administrations, too, have proven willing to carry out executions in order to placate public opinion, usually after violent incidents or before elections.
The politicization of the killings has already begun. On December 23rd, outside of a memorial set up by the Zhongshan MRT, a woman tore up a copy of the civil defense handbook that has been distributed nationally. Yet it would not be surprising if, on the other side of the political aisle, changes to shore up national security with defense-minded aims also took place, with the tragedy used to justify such security measures.