The Chiayi District Prosecutors’ Office last month closed the investigation into the lawsuit brought by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) against the Chiayi County Farmer’s Association for slander and defamation, saying that it would not bring the association up on any charges.
The incident began during the association’s March elections, when a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate in the polls displayed cloth banners reading “Fight to the death against the KMT’s cancelation of the Old-Age Farmers’ Welfare Allowance Program” in Minsyong (民雄) and Yijhu (義竹) townships
Academia Sinica published an article in February suggesting the government impose a sunset clause for the allowance program. The article was at first well received by the Council of Agriculture.
However, after the council faced opposition on the issue, Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) gave his word that the government would not stop the program.
Due to the KMT’s Chiayi office being ineligible to be the plaintiff in the suit, office director Huang Yao-jen (黃耀仁) asked KMT party headquarters, which Ma represents, to assume the role.
After months of investigation, the prosecutors’ office said the DPP candidate’s actions were a reasonable criticism of a public matter and that there was no evidence of slander and defamation.
The defendants’ lawyer, Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘), criticized Ma and said the president was “vicious” because of the 51 defendants, more than 14 were over the age of 70 and one was 80.
It is very cruel for the KMT to force these old men, who only made reasonable comments in an ongoing public discussion, to appear in court in Chiayi, Tsai said, adding that the incident shows that the KMT wants to make farmers suffer through judiciary means.
DPP Legislator Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) said that the KMT had frequently made enemies of farmers, adding that it was “inhumane” for the ruling party to use justifications that would not stand up in a court of law to sue farmers as this would only result in worrying elderly agricultural workers.
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
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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