Two men are facing misinformation charges over video and rumors about COVID-19, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday, while the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau (MJIB) said that two Changhua County residents could face charges over rumors about Taiwan’s first COVID-19 fatality.
The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) asked the CIB to investigate after a video surfaced earlier this month that purportedly showed the Vietnamese government providing free masks to people waiting in lines and claiming that Taiwan’s government had sent 500,000 masks to Hong Kong.
“This video shows the Vietnamese government working to contain the coronavirus outbreak by handing out free masks to people in Ho Chi Minh City, but we do not know what the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] government has done. It is doing nothing,” the video says. “The DPP government sent 500,000 masks to Hong Kong, giving five masks to each Hong Kong resident, but people in Taiwan cannot find any masks to buy.”
The CIB checked with the Vietnam Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei, which said that Hanoi had not distributed free masks, and the video showed an activity by a Vietnamese charity, Fourth Investigation Corps officer Wang Chih-cheng (王志成) said.
“Taiwan’s government did not send masks to Hong Kong ... so we determined the video was fake news that had created distrust in our government, and could have panicked the public,” Wang said.
A 62-year-old Chiayi County resident surnamed Liu (劉) allegedly circulated the video on the messaging app Line, as well as sending it to friends and others through social media sites, CIB investigators said.
Helped by information provided by Liu, the CIB discovered that the video Liu had downloaded originated with a 44-year-old Taipei resident surnamed Wu (吳), Wang said.
Liu and Wang face charges of contravening Article 63 of the Communicable Disease Control Act (傳染病防治法), which states: “Persons who disseminate rumors or incorrect information concerning epidemic conditions of communicable diseases, resulting in damages to the public or others, shall be fined up to NT$ 3 million” (US$99,160), the CIB said.
Between Jan. 23 and Wednesday, police had investigated 83 cases of rumors and misinformation about the “Wuhan virus,” while prosecutors are investigating 48 cases, with 70 people facing indictments, Wang said.
Meanwhile, the MJIB yesterday questioned two Changhua residents, surnamed Yang (楊) and Chuang (莊), who allegedly circulated Line messages claiming that the elder sister and nephew of the nation’s first fatality, the driver of an unlicensed taxi, had also caught the virus and listing places they claimed his family members lived, and restaurants, grocery stores, clinics and a massage parlor they had visited.
Yang and Chuang would also face charges for contravening Article 63, because the messages were not true and residents of the areas cited had been alarmed, while local businesses had been hurt, MJIB officials said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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