Charges against a Nantou County student who was allegedly the source of a post that turned out to be a major fake news story have been dropped.
The student had been charged with disseminating disinformation following the suicide of a Japan-based Taiwanese diplomat in September.
The student — a man surnamed Yu (游) from Nantou’s Puli Township (埔里) — was charged with breaching Article 63 of the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法) after investigators alleged he was the source of a post that in September turned out to be fake.
Photo: Lin Tsui-yi, Taipei Times
Prosecutors said that Yu on Sept. 6 had posted on online bulletin board system Professional Technology Temple, claiming that China’s consulate was helping stranded travelers at Kansai International Airport following Typhoon Jebi, while the Osaka branch of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office was indifferent to the plight of Taiwanese stranded there.
A Taiwan Nantou District Court judge said that the evidence presented by prosecutors was insufficient to prove that social disturbance had occurred as a result of the post.
During questioning, Yu said he was in Osaka from Aug. 30 to Sept. 12, but denied owning the account used to make the post.
Yu said that his personal information had been used by someone else to open a fake account.
The judge said the evidence showed that the account belonged to Yu, but added that those stranded in Japan at the time only had to endure a long wait and there was no way to prove that the Taiwanese stranded at Osaka’s airport felt fear or panic.
Weng Wei-lun (翁偉倫), a lawyer and former public prosecutor at the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office, said the judge’s position on the case was reasonable, because, although Yu’s post stirred up discontent with the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Osaka, it did not invoke public fear.
Despite the judge’s decision not to proceed with a case, Yu would still endure a backlash from the online community and at National Taipei University, where he is a student, Weng said.
National Taipei University would communicate with Yu after classes resume today to try to determine his motivation for making the post and help him understand the severity of making untrue statements on a public forum, university secretary-general Lu Yu-cheng (呂育誠) said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the decision to not proceed with a case against Yu was “displeasing and regretful,” and that it was hard to accept.
The ministry said it would look into what actions could be taken to protect the rights and interests of those who were negatively affected by the disinformation Yu spread.
Representative to Japan Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said he was happy the person behind the fake news story was found, so that former director-general of the Osaka branch of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office Su Chii-cherng’s (蘇啟誠) name could be cleared.
Su committed suicide in his residence in Japan on Sept. 14.
Hsieh said that anyone would be furious over the suicide, which resulted from tens of thousands of people directing their condemnation and grievances at the small group of representatives working hard at the Osaka representative office.
Hsieh last month said that he asked for an investigation into the fake news story, but stopped pursuing the issue when he discovered the post was made by a university student.
“Finding heavier laws [with which to charge Yu] is a simple matter, but in the end I used the Social Order Maintenance Act — the lightest option — to pursue charges,” Hsieh said.
The Puli Police Precinct on Saturday said they would respect the court’s decision and would not pursue further charges against Yu.
Additional reporting by Wu Cheng-feng, Weng yu-huang, Peng Wan-hsin and Lin Tsui-yi in Japan
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS