The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday said that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has an ulterior motive in proposing laws to limit the influence of “Chinese proxies” in Taiwan.
Several Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and New Power Party lawmakers have proposed amendments to 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) and other legislation to clamp down on Chinese proxies.
The Tsai administration is intent on passing the “Chinese proxy acts,” which could become a tool by the DPP government to crack down on its political enemies, Sun Ta-chien (孫大千), deputy executive of the presidential election campaign office of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), told a news conference in Taipei.
Given the DPP’s close ties with the US and Japan, it begs the question of whether the nation also needs a bill governing US and Japanese proxies, Sun said.
The DPP has been attempting to abolish Article 100 of the Criminal Code, but its amendments to the so-called “Five Acts for National Security” have exceeded the parameters of Article 100, former Taipei County commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) said.
Article 100 is commonly considered the legal basis behind the White Terror era.
The “Five Acts” include additions and amendments to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, as well as amendments to the Criminal Code, the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法) and the National Security Act (國家安全法), which the Legislative Yuan passed in July.
Per the amendments, the government would not need evidence to summon a person for questioning, nor does it need to explain detentions or arrests, Chou said.
Prison sentences would be seven years or more, with fines ranging from NT$50 million to NT$100 million (US$1.64 million to US$3.28 million), he said.
Any bill pushed forward by the Executive Yuan or the Presidential Office is fast-tracked without question, Chou said, adding that DPP members have become the minions of the “Dong Chang” (東廠).
The Dong Chang was a Ming Dynasty secret police and spy agency.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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