Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) has come under fire after claiming a connection between the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and a chemical company at the center of the tainted food scare.
Chiu’s remarks drew angry denunciations from DPP officials, coming just before a nationwide sweep of tainted food products suspected to have originated in part from New Taipei City (新北市)-based Yu Shen Chemical Co.
“This KMT lawmaker appears to use freedom of speech to issue fake declarations and slander at every opportunity. As well as strong condemnation, we have also asked our lawyers to study the possibility of a lawsuit,” DPP spokesperson Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said.
Chiu claimed in the past two days that Yu Shen owner Lai Chun-chieh (賴俊傑) has donated heavily to the DPP in the past. Chiu also alleged that Lai’s son, a Taipei Times staff reporter, was also being actively recruited to run for lawmaker on the DPP ticket in New Taipei City, with relations between the two “extremely close.”
DPP officials and Chiu’s election opponent in Greater Kaohsiung, Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟), have dismissed Chiu’s claims as “groundless lies” and probably based on a fake petition circulated on Internet bulletin boards.
Chiu’s “fabricated news” was a distraction from the tainted food scare and an effort to “mislead the public,” Chen said.
“None of it is real,” Chao said, pointing to a fake Web petition asking Lai’s son to run that he said was behind Chiu’s claims. “It shows that ... [Chiu’s remarks] aren’t just a bogus report, but more importantly, a possible case of political manipulation.”
Chiu told the Chinese-language Apple Daily on Monday that he had seen an online petition asking Lai’s son to run for the DPP, adding that he was still acquiring information about the family’s alleged donations to the DPP.
Last month, Chiu was also criticized after he made allegations against DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) that were shot down days later when the DPP released bank records showing that she had closed a preferential savings account.
DPP politicians at the time accused Chiu of making the remarks to boost his campaign to win the KMT primary for the legislative elections in January.
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:
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