Assets under the control of the Friends of the Armed Forces Association should be investigated, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said yesterday, as questioning concluded at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei of government officials over draft legislation to deal with alleged “illicit” assets under the control of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
“The Friends of the Armed Forces Association was established by the KMT and received NT$33.3 billion [US$1 billion] in funding from the government, but only NT$1.8 billion remains,” Chen said at an Internal Administration Committee meeting, where the proposals are being reviewed.
Chen serves as one of the committee’s conveners.
Photo: Taipei Tiimes
“Put simply, this is a case of public property becoming party assets that then became private property,” Chen said, adding that the organization’s budget suggests that there is a possibility it had not directed all of the funds it received from a military benefit tax to charitable work.
The tariff was levied on the US-dollar value of all imported goods from 1955 to 1989, with Chen saying that one-third of the funds had gone to the association.
The association was founded in 1951 to perform charitable work related to members of the armed forces, but today is known mainly for the Hero House chain of hotels and a restaurant it operates nationwide.
Chen said the association last year spent only NT$10 million on charity for members of the armed forces out of its annual gross revenue of NT$380 million, despite being able to rent public land at low rates.
“The Hero House facilities were intended to benefit members of the armed forces and lot of money was raised for the purpose, but now they are even open to Chinese tourists,” he said. “This is using a charity benefiting troops as a cover for running a business.”
Dealing with “subsidiary organizations” that are historically affiliated with the KMT has been a key issue in the national debate over “transitional justice” to redress perceived injustices that occurred prior to democratization, with critics advocating that the organizations be obliged to return illicitly acquired assets to national control.
Yesterday’s hearing came after a previous questioning session ran overtime.
A series of public hearings is to follow before formal review of the proposals begins.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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