Despite EasyCards featuring Japanese adult video actress Yui Hatano having all sold out within hours of their release, the controversy continued yesterday as a dozen women demanded that Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and EasyCard Corp chairman Tai Chi-chuan (戴季全) step down for allowing the cards to go on sale.
Led by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei city councilors Kuo Chao-yan (郭昭巖) and Wang Chih-bin (汪志冰), the protesters demanded an apology from Ko, saying that releasing the cards was disrespectful to both women and the city council.
Wang criticized EasyCard for selling the cards, despite Ko having said that they would not be sold publicly, saying that accepting pre-orders via telephone constituted a public sale.
Kuo urged Tai to resign over the controversial cards, adding that Ko should not have appointed Tai, who previously served as Ko’s campaign director, to the “sinecure.”
Xinyi District Women,s Association member Chen Hsiao-wen (陳曉雯) called for the cards to be recalled, saying they have turned Taipei into a “pornographic city,” which she said both threatened the safety of women and left them at a loss as to how to educate their children.
EasyCard Corp said that all 15,000 sets of cards bearing photos of Hatano were sold out yesterday at 4:18am after the firm started accepting pre-orders at midnight.
KMT Taipei City Councilor Chung Hsiao-ping (鐘小平) yesterday filed charges against Ko and Tai with the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, accusing the two of breach of trust and contempt of a government agency.
He said Ko and Tai committed a breach of trust as both men said that the cards were introduced for charity, but the company allegedly paid Hatano for her pictures to appear on the cards.
The issuance of the cards was a “disgrace” to the Taipei City Government, he added.
Ko yesterday said in response to media queries on why the cards went on sale, despite Ko’s disavowal of the cards, that the decision was made to minimize the damage.
Letting out a long sigh, he said: “This [incident] should not have happened, but it transpired anyway. So you are left with two solutions: One will inflict more harm; the other, less.”
He said he would order Tai to render a report on the company’s handling of the incident, which is to include points on the decisionmaking process regarding the Hatano-themed cards, namely, why nobody in the company tried to prevent the plan from being implemented, and how communication with reporters could have been improved.
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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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