More than 200 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supporters yesterday protested outside the office of Taoyuan City Councilor Wang Hao-yu (王浩宇), a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member, angered by his Facebook post about the late Kaohsiung City Council speaker Hsu Kun-yuan (許崑源).
Protesters outside Wang’s office in Jhongli District (中壢) said the post made light of Hsu’s death on Saturday night, hours after the recall election of Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜).
“Staunchly support Han Kuo-yu! Kaohsiung City Council Speaker Hsu Kun-yuan has died after falling from a building,” Wang wrote.
Photo: Lee Jung-ping, Taipei Times
DPP Taipei City Councilor Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) has also come under fire for a Facebook post on Saturday asking if Hsu’s death was linked to gambling debts. Liang deleted the post and issued an apology later that night.
KMT Taoyuan City Councilor Chan Chiang-tsun (詹江村) and former KMT legislator Wu Yu-jen (吳育仁) yesterday called on supporters to protest in front of Wang’s office.
Wang had made similar remarks in the past, which showed he was unfit to hold office, Chan said, citing a post about a protester against pension reforms who fell from a building and died in 2018, and a post after former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) died in March.
Wang’s office closed for the day, and at about noon the Jhongli Police Precinct erected barricades in front of the office, restricted traffic on the road in front of it to one direction and deployed a large number of officers at the site as a precautionary measure.
More than 200 people showed up to protest. After reading condolences for Hsu, some of them began yelling insults at Wang’s office, calling for his recall and throwing eggs at the building.
The crowd became agitated after Wu and two others were taken away by police for contravening the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法).
Separately, about 50 members of the Blue Sky Action Alliance, the pro-unification Concentric Patriotism Association and other groups protested outside Liang’s office in Taipei’s Datong District (大同), calling for his recall.
Liang’s office, which was closed, issued a statement saying Liang respected the protesters’ views and asked for them to remain calm.
In other developments, Han led Kaohsiung City Government officials in paying respects to Hsu at a funeral hall in the city, where he recited chants from Buddhism’s Heart Sutra (心經) for an hour.
New Power Party Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Jie (黃捷) also visited the funeral home to pay respects to Hsu, but was criticized by Wu Chiu-li (吳秋麗), an official in Kaohsiung’s Legal Affairs Department, for wearing red lipstick to the wake and not wearing a mask while inside.
Additional reporting by Chen Wen-chan and Kuo An-chia
Without completed infrastructure and training, the expedited sale of new F-16s from the US could become a burden rather than a help, a military official said yesterday. Reuters on Thursday last week reported that Washington is looking to accelerate the delivery of 66 new F-16C/D Block 70 aircraft in response to what it sees as increasing intimidation by Beijing. Under the terms of the original US$8 billion deal signed in 2019, the US is expected to deliver a single-seater and double-seater for testing next year, then deliver the 66 new aircraft in batches of four or five from 2024 to 2026. The officials
SLIGHTS: Beijing intends to display pro-unification messages and prominently feature Taiwanese volunteers in its propaganda videos, an official said Taiwanese officials are poised to boycott next month’s Beijing Winter Olympics, an official with knowledge of the matter said yesterday, citing concerns that China would slight Taiwan during the Games. This year’s Winter Olympics are scheduled to open on Friday next week amid a diplomatic boycott by Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Lithuania, New Zealand, the UK and the US in response to China’s human rights abuses against Uighurs in Xinjiang and crackdowns on democracy advocates in Hong Kong. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said that a Cabinet-appointed task force has determined that Taiwan’s delegation would abstain from the opening and
INCREASED COOPERATION: Part of the funding is to be used to further the aims of a Taiwan-US human resources development platform launched in 2015, a source said An increase of ￥100 million (US$878,765) to Japan’s annual foreign affairs budget is for “advancing the Japan-Taiwan relationship,” information published on the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Web site showed. The ministry’s budget for last year was ￥1.7 billion; it was increased to ￥1.8 billion for this year. The ministry wrote that the additional funding was to be used for “cooperating with allies and like-minded countries to safeguard the universal values of the international community.” Regarding Taiwan specifically, the ministry said that it was “responding to an increasingly complex security and economic environment,” and that it aimed to “strengthen diplomacy and cooperation
A majority of Japanese feel friendly toward Taiwan, with almost half of respondents in a poll saying that they want to visit the country after COVID-19 travel curbs are eased, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan said yesterday. The office said that 75.9 percent of respondents said they feel friendly toward Taiwan, citing as reasons the friendliness and politeness of Taiwanese, the long history of ties between the two nations, and the strength of bilateral trade. More than one-quarter of respondents — 26.4 percent — said they had traveled to Taiwan, while 47.8 percent said they would like to
RSS