A volunteer at a pro-independence organization yesterday accused Chunghwa Post of infringing his personal freedom and privacy after a package delivered to him with “Republic of Taiwan (台灣國)” in its address was tampered with.
Kuo Chien-kuo (郭建國), a volunteer for the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan, said a friend sent him the package from the US that arrived in Taiwan last Friday.
Kuo’s friend sent the package to the alliance’s office using the address “100, Chindao East Rd, Taipei, Republic of Taiwan.”
Kuo said that a security guard in the office building received the package on his behalf. When Kuo obtained it he was surprised to discover that the words “Republic of Taiwan” on the package, both in Chinese characters and in English letters, had been blacked out.
Kuo said his friend told him that this could not have been done by the US Postal Service, and both he and his friend were convinced that it must have occurred in Taiwan.
“This is self-belittling behavior,” Kuo said. “As civil servants, the workers at Chunghwa Post might want to think twice about damaging people’s property by tampering with a package.”
He said he was owed an explanation and that Chunghwa Post had no right to interfere with packages because of political ideology.
In response, Tseng Chin-hsiung (曾錦雄), director of Chunghwa Post’s mail and business operation department, said the general principle is that a mailman checks addresses to see that it is possible to deliver to them, whether the address is written in English or Chinese.
“On average, we handle 2.6 billion items of mail and packages a year,” he said.
“We really do not have the time to single out a specific package and change the address,” Tseng said.
“Nor do we have the right to do so,” he said.
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