Taichung City Mayor and former foreign minister Jason Hu (
"Hu was shocked by the campaign literature and said that it was not a good way of doing things," said Huang Wen-ming (
However, KMT officials also said that Hu, the director general of the pan-blue campaign headquarters in Taichung, did not take any action to stop the circulation of the poster or prevent future campaign literature from using similar material.
"The poster was only distributed once, mostly as newspaper inserts. Hu never asked the campaign headquarters to put a halt on distribution or to recall the posters that had already been given out," said Chen Ching-fu (
Featuring pictures of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, al-Qaeda terror figurehead Osama bin Laden and the destruction of one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City, the campaign poster warns the public against voting for President Chen Shui-bian (
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (
"Chen has spent his life fighting for democracy. To call him a dictator or terrorist is an insult. It is an insult not just to Chen, but to all those who support democracy," Hsiao said.
"The use of images from an atrocity on the poster is highly inappropriate and is culturally insensitive," she said, adding that Hu had previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
GUGGENHEIM
Meanwhile, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, with whom Hu has been in difficult negotiations for months over establishing a satellite museum in Taichung, said yesterday through press officer Jennifer Russo that it would not comment on Hu or the KMT-People First Party alliance using images of the destruction of the Twin Towers or Adolf Hitler.
Hu must still secure a significant proportion of funds from the central government for the museum project to proceed.
On Thursday, the Taipei Times contacted several representative offices for their response to the endorsement of the "terrorism" poster by the former foreign minister.
David Miller, an assistant information officer from the American Institute in Taiwan, declined to comment on the content of the poster, saying that it was an "internal affair."
Maggie Yeh (
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US killed 68 British nationals.
Howard Lin (
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires