Can We Still Sleep Soundly After Tomorrow?

A person's residence is their sanctuary and the center of their private life. If the state could arbitrarily intrude into private dwellings, individuals would have no freedom, personal safety, or security of property, let alone privacy and dignity. Therefore, the inviolability of one's residence is the foundation of personal survival, freedom, and dignity. The legal maxim that a person's home is their castle—where the wind and rain may enter, but the king cannot—is not only the most basic cornerstone of modern constitutionalism, but also a civilizational achievement attained by humanity over the past millennium at the cost of countless blood.

To implement this fundamental principle of the rule of law, Article 10 of the Constitution guarantees citizens' freedom of residence, Article 306 of the Criminal Code establishes the crime of unlawful intrusion into a residence, and laws such as the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Administrative Execution Act, and others impose various procedural regulations on the state's entry into private homes, strictly requiring that the state shall not enter private residences without following statutory procedures. Based on the understanding that a residence serves as the center of private life, places protected by the constitutional freedom of residence are naturally not limited to residential homes; other secluded spaces where parties can engage in private activities, such as public restrooms, rented KTV private rooms, and hotel rooms, are also included.

Forced Door-Breaking Without a Search Warrant

If public authority can escape the strict and layered constraints of due process, and even ignore the explicit opposition of the parties concerned to arbitrarily invade people's residences, then the ambition of those in power to trample on the rule of law in pursuit of autocracy has already been fully exposed. With all laws reduced to nothingness, freedom vanishes, and the real threat of the recurrence of "involuntary disappearances" of people in their homes or even on the streets during past authoritarian rule becomes imaginable.

Yesterday, without any search warrant and without being able to articulate any specific circumstances of suspected crimes or threats to public safety, the police disregarded the explicit refusal to open the door by members of the Economic Democracy Union staying at the Novotel hotel near the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. They forcibly broke down the door and demanded that they leave, threatening forced expulsion otherwise. Such practices clearly infringed upon their freedom of residence and freedom of speech, and crossed the aforementioned rule-of-law red line that residences shall not be arbitrarily violated. This can only be described as lawless and as naked state violence.

Afterward, although the Novotel issued a statement claiming that because the number of checked-in guests exceeded the registered number and they refused to register, it reported the matter to police authorities in accordance with Article 21, Paragraph 6 of the Regulations Governing Tourist Hotels. The police claimed that the ones who broke down the door were hotel security personnel, and that the police were merely present to gather evidence. These explanations are fraught with doubt (after the conflict, the Aviation Police Bureau stationed at least twenty to thirty police officers outside the room door, forbidding members of the civic group inside the room from accepting media interviews. If it truly were merely a matter of the number of occupants exceeding the registered number, there would be no need to go to such great lengths!). Even assuming these claims are true, the serious illegality committed by the police remains inescapable.

Continuation of the Abuse of State Violence

For although Article 21, Paragraph 6 of the Regulations Governing Tourist Hotels provides that operators may handle the situations specified in the various subparagraphs of that article themselves or report them to the police, it does not authorize operators or the police to forcibly break into rented rooms. Even assuming there was a situation where the number of occupants exceeded the registered number as claimed by the Novotel, this remains a simple civil dispute, the rights and wrongs of which should be adjudicated by a court (individuals in the room not on the registration list may simply be friends visiting guests and may not necessarily have the intention to reside there). Since the hotel had no right to resort to self-help by breaking down doors and forcing evictions, the police likewise had no right to use such means to solve problems for the hotel. When the hotel resorted to such illegal means of self-help and the police stood by watching like ceremonial participants—amounting to "emboldening" or even "backing up" the operation—then whether hotel staff or police personnel, they are naturally all accomplices to illegal intrusion into a residence.

Ever since the Ma administration bloodily handled public protest events during the Chiang-Chen talks, it has progressively demonstrated an unyielding determination to indiscriminately exercise state violence and destroy human rights and the rule of law, reaching its peak during the Sunflower Student Movement with the large-scale, bloody dispersal of the crowds occupying the Executive Yuan.

As a continuation of the Ma administration's habitual abuse of state violence, the Novotel door-breaking incident trampled upon the sacred and inviolable fundamental rule-of-law principle of residential security, representing a further challenge to the Taiwanese people's determination to uphold the rule of law and freedom. If we remain indifferent, can we still sleep soundly in our own homes after tomorrow?