A Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Central Committee branch was listed among the branches of the National Women’s League on the organization’s Web site, despite the latter claiming that it is not affiliated with the KMT.
Founded by Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) wife Soong Mayling (宋美齡), the league’s assets have attracted scrutiny over allegations that it illegally profited from its ties to the KMT’s authoritarian regime.
Some of the league’s funding came from the Military Benefit Tax, which was levied on the US dollar value of all imported goods from 1955 to 1989.
Following two rounds of negotiations with the Ministry of the Interior and the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee, the league late last month agreed to donate nearly 80 percent of its NT$38.1 billion (US$1.26 billion) worth of assets under government supervision.
It also ran an announcement in newspapers and on its Web site denying any links with the KMT, saying that none of its assets came from the party’s coffers.
“Its objective is to serve the nation and the public. It is by no means bound to the interests of a certain political party,” the notice read, referring to the league.
However, an introduction on its Web site provides conflicting information. It said the league has 25 overseas and nine domestic branches, including a KMT Central Committee branch.
Meanwhile, the asset committee’s second investigation report on the league suggested that the KMT had given the league a direct order to establish an election campaign group.
The group’s mission was to establish close contact with the KMT headquarters to help it conduct election campaigns, the report said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lai Jui-jung (賴瑞隆) yesterday said that the findings were “no surprise” given the group’s link with Soong, who led it for decades.
“It has repeatedly claimed that it is not affiliated with the KMT, but how could the league have possibly levied the monetary bonuses [the public] paid to soldiers during the authoritarian era had it not been for the KMT’s party-state rule?” Lai said.
The committee should continue its investigation to ascertain whether the league has other illegal assets, he said.
The committee should press the league to donate all of its assets, rather than 80 percent, he added.
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said the KMT and the league “have been two separate entities all along.”
Asked to comment on the KMT Central Committee branch listed on the league’s Web site and its apparent ties to the party, Hung said he could not to comment on the matter, which “dates back to a long time ago.”
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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