Marine Corps Lieutenant General Hsu Tai-sheng (
"Honor is the most important thing to the Marines. Chang's accusation has seriously damaged not only my but also the Marines' reputation, so I am filing suit to prove that what he said was not true," Hsu said.
Hsu made the remarks during a press conference held yesterday by the Ministry of National Defense to counter Chang's cash-for-promotion allegation against high-ranking military officers.
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
After the press conference, Hsu immediately went to the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office to file his slander suit against Chang.
"What Chang said has seriously humiliated the military. We hereby provide evidence in black-and-white to defend our reputation and are filing a suit against him," said ministry spokesman Rear Admiral Wu Chi-fang (
Chang on Tuesday claimed that Hsu was promoted to the post of lieutenant general and the commander of the Marines by paying a bribe of NT$8 million (US$249,162) to former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Chen Che-nan (陳哲男) in 2003.
Chang also claimed that former commander Ko Cheng-sheng (
According to a report by the Chinese-language United Daily News, retired major generals Tyson Fu (
In response to Fu and Huang's claims, Hsu said at the press conference that their statements had misled the public.
"Basically, we respect and believe that Fu and Huang are clean. But their statements also imply that those who got promoted got their promotion by paying cash. This is not fair," Hsu said.
The deputy chief of the ministry's personnel department, Lieutenant General Lee Ching-kuo (李清國), said that all promotions of generals or admirals were strictly and clearly regulated in black and white.
"All candidates for promotion are remarkable and outstanding military personnel. However, the number of posts available for promotion is limited. It is impossible to please everybody with the results," Lee said.
When asked by reporters whether the ministry has investigated allegations of bribery demands from the Presidential Office and why the promotion of more than 20 generals and admirals were not made public, Wu and Lee said they had done all they were supposed to do.
"We have filed a request with the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office to investigate this case. I can only assure you that no general or admiral would do such a thing," Wu said.
"However, the Presidential Office is a higher level office than the defense ministry and it is the president who decides on which candidate is promoted. We do not have the authority to comment on the president's decision," he added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching