Innocent Until Proven Unemployed

Horrible, horrible story in Taiwan about a drunken man who had an argument with his live-in girlfriend, and to get even, drops their 10-month old daughter into a pot of boiling noodles.  Scalded over 95% of her body.

Girl lingers a few days in hospital, then dies.  Hard to see how this guy doesn't get the death penalty, but he WAS drunk, so I guess some judge might view that as an extenuating circumstance. *

Anyways, that's the background for this:

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday urged the Ministry of the Interior to include alcoholics and those who have been unemployed for a long period of time in the ministry’s database for observation in a bid to prevent potential domestic violence and child abuse.

Ho.  Lee.  Crap.  Taiwan's KMT wants the government to SPY on its own citizens.

Correction:  It's already happening.

Minister of the Interior Liao Liou-yi (廖了以) on Monday vowed to pour more resources into reducing domestic violence by expanding its database of high-risk families.

At present, the database only includes children whose parents have alcohol and drug addictions or families that often have arguments.

I've never heard of this before.  Any OTHER Big Brother-esque databases here we should be aware of?
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* I'm a little ashamed to say, but my initial reaction was that the culprit should be asked to do the right thing -- then placed in a room alone with his conscience for ten minutes with a single bullet and pistol.

Terrible idea, of course.  If it became common practice, you'd have suicides and "suicides" occurring in every jail in Taiwan.  So, due process is where it's at.

Wednesday's Taipei Times included one detail that wasn't mentioned in previous reports:

The mother reportedly dared the man after he threatened to throw the infant into water being used to make noodles.

OK, that's really not cool, either.  You don't dare somebody with impaired judgment to do something stupid, dangerous or just downright evil.  You don't do that in the West -- and you certainly don't do that in Taiwan, which has a whole "face culture" dynamic to exacerbate the situation.

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UPDATE:  The mother in the case may indeed be charged for her role.

It was reported that the mother might also face charges of incitement to commit murder for daring her drunken partner to toss the girl into the pot during an argument.

Comments

[Arthur Dent]

Excellent post. My thoughts exactly. Now being unemployed or having arguments puts you on the risk list? I guess that list is going to expand what with unemployment rising ...

[Owl Creek Observer]

I recently re-read "1984" by George Orwell and this sounds disturbingly like that.