The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday accused President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration of restricting freedom of speech through crackdowns on perceived disinformation.
Since Jan. 31 last year, the government has been collecting evidence of perceived disinformation from social media posts and group chats on messaging apps, said Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋), deputy director-general of KMT presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu’s (韓國瑜) campaign headquarters, at a news conference, citing documents from an unnamed local police department.
Since no definition of disinformation has been given to police to guide their investigations, people could be summoned for questioning whenever investigators suspect they had helped spread false information, Chou said.
Photo: CNA
“This is a serious encroachment on human rights,” he said. “We think there are probably thousands of people who have been approached by police [for disinformation allegations].”
At least one police officer provided information to the KMT because they were concerned about infringing on people’s freedom of speech, he said, urging authorities to release the statistics on the numbers of people who have summoned for questioning.
The police crackdown on disinformation is all part of a nationwide program to curb vote-buying and the spread of false information launched by the National Police Agency (NPA) on May 17 last year, KMT Taipei City Councilor Yu Shu-hui (游淑慧) said.
Under the program, police officers who crack a disinformation case are rewarded the same as those who crack a vote-buying case, she said.
“The approach is creating problems for members of the public and the police,” she said.
Since disinformation cases are easier to crack, the program inadvertently encourages police to probe disinformation over other more difficult and important cases, she said.
From January to Dec. 2 last year, the National Police Agency handled about 400 cases of disinformation, with the majority — 173 of them — involving a political figure, she said.
“Do authorities only target critics of the Democratic Progressive Party and those who spreads false information about Tsai, while ignoring all mudslinging campaigns against Han?” she asked, urging the agency to publish the statistics on the 173 cases.
Separately, Criminal Investigation Bureau Commissioner Huang Ming-chao (黃明昭) rejected allegations that the judiciary is targeting supporters of Han and the KMT.
Additional reporting by Jason Pan
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