A Polish journalist accused Taiwan’s representative office of interfering with the freedom of the press by requesting a Polish media outlet to retract a report on protesters’ occupation of the Executive Yuan.
Having published a series of reports on the occupation of the legislature, the Polish media group Niezalezna — which owns several print and online news outlets in Poland, including the daily Gazeta Polska Codziennie, the weekly Gazeta Polska and the monthly Nowe Panstwo — received a letter from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Bureau in Poland, protesting its use of an analogy between the occupation of the Executive Yuan compound by protesters and the consequent violent crackdown by police and the occupation of the central square, Maidan, in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, by protesters who were also treated brutally by the police.
While saying that Taiwan is a “robust democracy and the people in Taiwan enjoy a high degree of freedom of speech,” the representative office still requested that an “appropriate retraction can be made to present the current picture of this news story and avoid misunderstanding among people in Poland and Taiwan,” as “making an analogy between a fully fledged democracy and the bloodshed that happened in Ukraine” not only presents a “completely wrong image of Taiwan,” it is also insulting, the letter said.
Hanna Shen, the reporter for the media group who wroted the story, as well as several other stories on the student occupation of the legislature, said she was shocked when she received the letter.
“My newspaper has been publishing articles very critical of the governments of Russia, China and the former Ukrainian government, but we never received any letter from the representative offices of those countries asking us to retract anything,” she told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview in English.
“And those countries can’t be even called democratic,” she added.
“I personally think this letter, as an attempt to influence, to control the way media in free and democratic Poland writes about Taiwan, is not acceptable,” she said.
Shen said that the analogy between Taiwan and Maidan was made by several students taking part in the protest who she interviewed, and that she believed the analogy was suitable after having personally witnessed unarmed students, doctors and journalists being beaten by the police when the government evicted protesters from the Executive Yuan.
“Not to mention that many media outlets around the world — including in Germany and in the US — have also made the same analogy in their reports,” Shen said.
“I wonder if the Taiwanese government has also asked them to retract the analogy,” Shen added.
When asked for a response, Zhang Ming-zhong (張銘忠), director-general of European affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that the ministry’s overseas mission would issue a rebuttal in the event of biased reports.
As for the particular case concerning the Polish journalist’s complaint, Zhang said he is in the midst of contacting the representative office to better understand the matter.
Intelligence agents have recorded 510,000 instances of “controversial information” being spread online by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) so far this year, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said in a report yesterday, as it warned of artificial intelligence (AI) being employed to generate destabilizing misinformation. The bureau submitted a written report to the Legislative Yuan in preparation for National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen’s (蔡明彥) appearance before the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee today. The CCP has been using cognitive warfare to divide Taiwanese society by commenting on controversial issues such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) investments in the
INVESTIGATION: The case is the latest instance of a DPP figure being implicated in an espionage network accused of allegedly leaking information to Chinese intelligence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member Ho Jen-chieh (何仁傑) was detained and held incommunicado yesterday on suspicion of spying for China during his tenure as assistant to then-minister of foreign affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮). The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said Ho was implicated during its investigation into alleged spying activities by former Presidential Office consultant Wu Shang-yu (吳尚雨). Prosecutors said there is reason to believe Ho breached the National Security Act (國家安全法) by leaking classified Ministry of Foreign Affairs information to Chinese intelligence. Following interrogation, prosecutors petitioned the Taipei District Court to detain Ho, citing concerns over potential collusion or tampering of evidence. The
‘COMPREHENSIVE PLAN’: Lin Chia-lung said that the government was ready to talk about a variety of issues, including investment in and purchases from the US The National Stabilization Fund (NSF) yesterday announced that it would step in to staunch stock market losses for the ninth time in the nation’s history. An NSF board meeting, originally scheduled for Monday next week, was moved to yesterday after stocks plummeted in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s announcement of 32 percent tariffs on Taiwan on Wednesday last week. Board members voted to support the stock market with the NT$500 billion (US$15.15 billion) fund, with injections of funds to begin as soon as today. The NSF in 2000 injected NT$120 billion to stabilize stocks, the most ever. The lowest amount it
NEGOTIATIONS: Taiwan has good relations with Washington and the outlook for the negotiations looks promising, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo said Taiwan’s GDP growth this year is expected to decrease by 0.43 to 1.61 percentage points due to the effects of US tariffs, National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei yesterday, citing a preliminary estimate by a private research institution. Taiwan’s economy would be significantly affected by the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs slapped by the US, which took effect yesterday, Liu said, adding that GDP growth could fall below 3 percent and potentially even dip below 2 percent to 1.53 percent this year. The council has commissioned another institution
RSS