Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said he never lied about informing the government before making a controversial speech at the annual Taipei-Shanghai City Forum last year.
In the speech in July last year, Ko said that the “two sides of the [Taiwan] Strait are one family” and are “a community with a shared destiny,” sparking controversy.
He later said that he had sent a draft of that speech to the National Security Council (NSC) before leaving for Shanghai, but did not receive a response.
The Presidential Office and the NSC have both denied receiving a draft of the speech beforehand, and Ko last month said that the two controversial phrases were added into the manuscript after he sent it to the council.
The International Federation of Journalists last week alleged that the city government silenced a reporter who discovered that the phrases were not included in the original script and intended to publish the information in June.
At the Taipei City Council yesterday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Wu Shih-cheng (吳世正) said Ko claimed to have sent a manuscript to the council without clarifying that the controversial phrases were not added.
“Being ‘deep green’ is my background, but the most beneficial thing for me as Taipei Mayor to do for Taiwan at present is to continue exchanges between the two cities,” Ko said. “So saying that the ‘two sides of the Strait are one family’ does not contradict my being ‘deep green.’”
“I only said I sent the manuscript to the NSC, but never that the phrases ‘the two sides of the Strait are one family’ and ‘a community with a shared destiny’ were included in it,” Ko said, adding that he had not silenced the reporter or ordered officials to do so.
Ko has been lying all along and should apologize to the NSC, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the reporter who was allegedly silenced, KMT Taipei City Councilor Chin Huei-chu (秦慧珠) said.
“Don’t arbitrarily accuse someone of lying,” Ko said in response. “You should apologize for the accusation.”
Taipei City Government spokesman Liu Yi-ting (劉奕霆) said it is his job to speak for the city government in response to news stories, but the city government would not interfere with the freedom of press, nor harass or intimidate media workers.
Liu offered to apologize if his communication with the media made reporters uncomfortable.
Asked by DPP Taipei City Councilor Ho Chih-wei (何志偉) whether he discussed the reporter’s news story with her superiors, Liu said that he did not contact her superiors on that particular story.
‘LONE WOLF’: The suspect was difficult to locate, as he did not use a cellphone, did not contact family and often lived in abandoned sites or parks, police said Taipei police on Thursday morning arrested a man accused of numerous burglaries and at least 14 incidents of sexual assault spanning more than 20 years, in what might be the nation’s most notorious crime spree in recent years. Sixty-year-old Tu Ming-lang (涂明朗) — who was yesterday placed in judicial detention, after a judge determined he was a flight risk without a fixed address — faces multiple charges of sexual assault and burglary, police said. A task force comprised of various law enforcement agencies arrested Tu as part of an investigation into an April 28 burglary in Daan District (大安), in which a
Ninth graders were asked to define “trolling” on this year’s standardized exam, reflecting efforts to make the test better reflect real-life situations. Adjustments to this year’s Comprehensive Assessment Program for Junior High School Students were revealed on Sunday, after the last cohort of students completed the test over the weekend. The Ministry of Education solicited feedback about the test from teachers, who approved of the new question in the English portion. Not only was question No. 20 “very much in line with real-life situations,” but it also used a new style in which students were asked to ascertain the correct dictionary definition based
Taiwan is on alert for monkeypox, a rare viral disease that has caused 87 infections in 11 countries over the past three weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Saturday. The WHO on Friday convened an emergency session to discuss a sudden outbreak of monkeypox in North America and Europe. Since the beginning of this month, 87 confirmed cases and 28 possible cases have been identified in 11 countries. The countries with the highest case counts are England with 29 cases, and Portugal and Spain with 23 each. Monkeypox is a viral zoonotic disease occurring primarily in the tropical rainforest areas
Three human skeletons and artifacts believed to be about 400 years old were unearthed by construction workers at National Ilan University in Yilan County, the university said yesterday. The discoveries were made on May 10 as workers were digging to expand the College of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science’s facilities, the university said in a statement. The skeletons were found at three sites, along with glass beads, copper bells and rings, discs and a fish-shaped metal knot, it said. The find is likely connected to the “Old Baili Village” (擺厘舊社, Bai Li Jiu She), an as-yet-undiscovered Kavalan settlement that has been mentioned in
RSS