A former Toronto-based Government Information Office director has been ordered to serve a sentence or pay a fine after a court yesterday found him guilty of defaming a professor and a media personality in an online posting.
National Taiwan University professor Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟) and political commentator Chin Heng-wei (金恆煒) sued Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英) for defamation after the former official, using the pseudonym Fan Lan-chin (范蘭欽), criticized them in an article he submitted to a popular commentary Web site in 2008.
In the article, Kuo likened Chen and Chin to “official violent dogs for Taiwanese independence” and said they “used violence to oppress the weak.”
The Taiwan High Court ordered Kuo to pay NT$50,000 in damages or serve a 50-day jail term for defaming the two. The ruling is final.
This was not the first time that Kuo’s comments landed him in hot water.
He was stripped of his civil servant status in March last year in the wake of a controversy over articles he wrote under his pen name defaming Taiwan and referring to Taiwanese as “rednecks.”
Kuo, who referred to himself as a “high-class Mainlander,” had written that “[China] should spend many years suppressing [people in Taiwan] instead of granting [them] any political freedom once they have taken Taiwan by force,” in addition to calling Taiwan a “ghost island.”
Kuo has said in his defense that his comments fell under the realm of freedom of speech and that his rights should be protected under the Constitution.
He said his comments reflected political realities and would hold up to a truth test.
In handing down the sentence, however, the judge said Kuo mistakenly took his own experiences as fact and posted the exaggerated comments on an open Web site where they damaged the reputations of Chen and Chin.
The judge added that as a government official at the time, Kuo should have been more careful in making comments and that he had a responsibility to ensure the veracity of his information.
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