Taiwan Matters!: UDN intern spreads malicious rumors in runup to Taiwan elections; unrelated: investigator runs amok

*posted Saturday, December 09, 2006 @ 5:23 AM by Tim Maddog* [Permalink] Tweet

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Wouldn't you know it? Just before the big mayoral elections in Taipei and Kaohsiung, an intern for the pro-unification United Daily News was caught spreading malicious rumors.

The Hsuan Chuang University student posted messages on the SocialForce.org discussion board saying that he and his neighbors had personally received payment of NT$1,700 (US$52.62) as an incentive to vote for the DPP's mayoral candidate in Taipei, Frank Hsieh. Others participating in the discussion expressed doubt, but Chiu pretended to be someone who "had originally planned to vote for Hsieh" but said that he was dismayed because "buying votes was just what the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) used to do." The as yet unidentified Chiu insisted that his story was true and that he had personally received the money. Someone passed the information along to Hsieh's campaign office which, in turn, contacted the police.

The person posting the messages turned out to be Chiu Chien-lun (sp?) (邱健倫), a resident of Hsinchu who (wouldn't you know it?) wasn't even eligible to vote in Taipei. After being identified by the police, he posted an admission and ~~a full~~ apology on the site where the discussion occurred. As one would expect, the UDN denied any responsibility for the events, just as Chiu did before police confronted him. But the university making excuses for the student's violations of the law is rather inexplicable. [UPDATE: Here are the links to the original fabrication, the reiteration of the lie, and the admission/half-assed apology on the SocialForce.org site -- the first two being posted on December 5, and the last one on December 8.]

Fellow pro-democracy writer Jerome F. Keating has recently used the metaphor of "dogs [who] learn from wolves" to describe "dogs" like Shih Ming-teh who left the DPP to run amongst the "wolves" of the KMT. What else would explain a student from a Buddhist university working for an organization like UDN and doing such things?

Here's the video.

3'28" YouTube video: " UDN intern lies about DPP mayoral candidate"

Who will investigate our investigators?
An investigator with the Criminal Justice Investigation Bureau was accused by Taipei citizens of intimidation.

Reports on SET said that Hung Sheng-hsiung (ph) (洪勝雄) was going door-to-door in a pro-green neighborhood recently asking people about their political inclinations and berating the DPP for "corruption" and "ineptitude." Additionally, at least one person said Hung repeatedly tried to get them to admit that they had accepted money in return for voting for DPP candidates. The daughter of one of those who experienced these things said that when she identified herself to the investigator as a reporter, his attitude abruptly did a 180-degree turn.

1'42" YouTube video: "Investigator Hung Sheng-hsiung and voter intimidation"

This is precisely the kind of "justice" which former president of the Executive Yuan, Hsu Shui-teh (KMT) meant when he once said, "The courts belong to us." ("法院是我們家[國民黨]開的.")

As Keating implied in his recent article, today's elections will hopefully bring Taiwan a step closer to a day when the wolves are no longer in our living rooms or even at our doorsteps.