Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh's (
Hsieh yesterday did not respond to the allegation directly, but said he could not respond to every groundless accusation because it would be a waste of his time and energy.
Hsieh said the Chinese-language Next magazine had claimed he was involved in "Operation Kuanghua," but after checking out the dates, he found he was only 16 years old at the time.
The operation was actually a government surveillance project on the nation's first Olympic medalist, Yang Chuan-kuang (
The magazine also alleged that Hsieh had secretly informed on fellow democracy activists during the 1980s.
Hsieh said he was asked by the Investigation Bureau to serve as an unpaid consultant for an advisory commission to crack down on graft and corruption.
The 12 commission members included former Judicial Yuan vice president Cheng Chung-mo (城仲模), former grand justice Yang Chien-Hua (楊建華), and prominent legal experts such as Huan Tong-shong (黃東熊) and Tsai Tun-ming (蔡墩銘), he said.
The latest accusation, which appeared in yesterday's issue of the magazine, claimed that Hsieh was involved in "Operation Chunyuan," in which Hsieh reported directly to Hsieh Yu-nan (
Before the DPP was established, the report said Hsieh Yu-nan formed a task force under the bureau's Taipei office and Hsieh Yu-nan served as the go-between for Hsieh and the bureau.
"I do not know what to say if other people want to dance to its tune," Frank Hsieh said.
Shen Fa-hui (
"It is immoral to base their accusation on one man's claim," Shen said.
"The media would become the accomplice of the former authoritarian regime if they continue such practices," Shen said.
Hsieh Hsin-ni (
Calling for an end to the smear campaign, Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦), another Hsieh camp spokesman, urged the media to check their stories to ensure balance reporting.
He said they did not rule out taking legal action against the accuser and the media for failing to substantiate their claims and correct erroneous reports.
"Such slander is irresponsible and mean," he said.
Meanwhile, Vice President Annette Lu (
She also called on Ma to tell the public whether he had spied on democracy activists for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime when he was studying in the US.
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