Seven Control Yuan members yesterday criticized a report issued by the Control Yuan on Wednesday regarding the suicide of Su Chii-cherng (蘇啟誠), the former director-general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office’s Osaka branch, as rife with unsubstantiated guesswork and unfair conclusions.
Su allegedly committed suicide over social pressure for reportedly adopting an indifferent tone toward Taiwanese stranded at Kansai International Airport in September last year after it was shut down by Typhoon Jebi and his subsequent reassignment to another branch office.
The Control Yuan on Wednesday issued a corrective measure against the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
However, Control Yuan members Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲), Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇), Tsai Chung-yi (蔡崇義), Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟), Jao Yung-ching (趙永清), Kao Yung-chen (高涌誠) and Peter Chang (張武修) said that there was no factual basis to issue a corrective measure, as the entire review was based on one telephone call to the Osaka office from a Taiwanese traveler requesting assistance.
While agreeing that the call on Sept. 6 had led to bad optics and necessitated a reprimand of the ministry, the Control Yuan in its report did not verify who placed the call and should have looked into the Nantou District Court’s files, the statement said.
Su’s superiors had tampered with the Osaka branch’s review of the incident and it might be conjecture that Su was pressured into shouldering the responsibility, it said.
The report arrived at unfair conclusions based on unsubstantiated claims, the seven members said.
As for the possibility that Su’s suicide was caused by the immense pressure he was under from netizens, the media and the ministry, the statement said that the report was unable to provide complete records of interviews with ministry personnel and Representative to Japan Frank Hsieh (謝長廷).
The report did not verify all correspondence between the ministry, Hsieh and Su after the incident, nor did it list the office’s jurisdictional responsibilities, it said.
“Jurisdictional responsibilities” referred to a possible oversight on Hsieh’s part in leaving the Osaka office to assist Taiwanese stranded in Hokkaido after an earthquake struck on Sept. 6 last year.
Addressing the issue that Su had faced reassignment as a punitive measure for the incident, the statement said that Su’s four-year tenure at the Naha office had already exceeded the ministry custom of reassigning diplomats to different posts every three years.
As a senior diplomat, it is not likely that Su would have misinterpreted the reassignment as a punitive measure, the statement said, adding that the Control Yuan’s inclusion of the possibility in its report was a gross misunderstanding of the ministry’s personnel rotation system.
The entire report should be made public to allow a point of reference for future commentary on fake news, the seven said.
The incompleteness of the report has greatly tarnished the Control Yuan’s image and directly contributes to the report’s inability to unveil the truth, settle the controversy and show the public the dangers of fake news, they added.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) declined to comment on the report during his appearance at Wednesday’s meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.
The ministry would offer solutions or issue clarifications with the Control Yuan after receiving notice of the corrective measure, Wu said.
The ministry did no wrong throughout the incident and has conducted an internal review of the issue, as demanded by the public and legislators, Wu said in response to Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) question asking if he thought the ministry’s handling of the incident merited a corrective measure.
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