Lam Wing-kei (林榮基), a former manager of Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay Books, was attacked yesterday morning by two unidentified men who threw red paint at him at a coffee shop in Taipei.
The incident took place at about 9am close to Zhongshan MRT Station near Lam’s new bookstore, which is scheduled to open on Saturday.
Lam, who immediately notified the police, said the suspects were wearing baseball caps and appeared to be in their 30s.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
They fled the scene on foot after splashing him with red paint, he said.
“It’s hard to imagine this sort of thing happening in Taiwan,” he said after the incident, adding that he believed the attack was orchestrated by authorities in China.
“Obviously, it was a threat, warning me not to open my bookstore,” Lam said.
Zhongshan Police Precinct said it was reviewing footage from surveillance cameras in the area to identify and find the attackers.
The incident occurred one day after Lam received a legal warning from a bookstore in New Taipei City, telling him that he was infringing on its trademark by giving his store a similar name in Chinese.
However, Lam expressed doubt about the company registered in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和), saying that it was probably a shell entity serving as a front for Chinese authorities, without elaborating.
The Mainland Affairs Council yesterday said that law enforcement would investigate the matter to determine whether the Chinese Communist Party or its affiliates were behind the legal challenge.
Lam was one of five shareholders and staff at Causeway Bay Books in Hong Kong, which sold books critical of Chinese leaders.
He disappeared into Chinese custody at the end of 2015, and was released on bail and allowed to return to Hong Kong in June 2016 to retrieve a hard drive listing the bookstore’s customers.
Instead, he jumped bail and went public, detailing how he was detained and blindfolded by police after crossing the border into Shenzhen, China, and spent months being interrogated.
He fled to Taiwan in April last year, and subsequently raised nearly NT$6 million (US$199,322) via a fundraising Web site from September to November last year to fund his new bookstore in Taipei.
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
RSS