Two twin sisters yesterday made a tearful complaint that a short video in which they voluntarily appeared to help their role model, Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強), with his re-election bid was altered on the Internet and portrayed them as brothel girls.
The twins — Chen Pei-yu (陳珮瑜) and Chen Pei-han (陳珮涵) — who graduated from college this year, said in a press conference held by Hu’s camp last week that they came from Taipei to help Hu’s campaign and that the video, made with friends, was intended to encourage young people to vote for Hu.
In the video, which is available on Hu’s campaign Web site, the twins, accompanied by Hu and other girls, are seen dancing and singing.
The pair claims a version of the clip available on YouTube was altered and portrayed the young women as working as hostesses at a well-known nightclub in Taichung.
In the altered version, footage of the twins is played alongside video of the club and hostesses, with voiceovers claiming the women offer sex services to customers there.
“We are thoroughly humiliated,” the twins said. “Politics are horrible.”
Tang Kuo-tai (唐國泰), a spokesman for Hu’s campaign team, said whoever produced the adulterated version of the video was “evil,” adding that Hu’s campaign office could ask prosecutors to investigate.
Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office spokesman Wu Tso-yan (吳祚延) also said the altered film on YouTube was humiliating and that prosecutors would look into the matter.
Democratic Progressive Party mayoral candidate Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) said that while Hu’s camp had initially claimed the twins were volunteers, it was now known that the pair worked for his campaign part-time.
Su said he wondered whether Hu’s camp may not have created the entire incident to attract publicity.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS