Government Information Office Minister Shieh Jyh-wey (謝志偉), who is in Washington as part of a personal trip to campaign and raise funds for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was confronted yesterday by members of the 319 Truth Investigation Alliance in Washington during a press conference.
Shieh is in the US after he was invited by Taiwanese expatriate supporters of the DPP to deliver speeches in five US cities. His first stop was Washington.
As soon as the conference began, alliance members Chang Wei-ping (張維平), Liu Li-tai (劉蒞台) Hsieh Chi-yu (謝啟宇) and others entered the conference venue, a McDonald's across the street from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Washington.
They then took turns blocking the conference by holding up placards, disregarding reporters' protests.
Chang, who works at Freddie Mac, a mortgage banker, also walked up behind Shieh and started calling Shieh names, even managing to land a blow on his back during the talk.
The spokesman for the conference urged the demonstrators to express their opinions later, but Chang and others then threw their placards at Shieh and got into a physical confrontation with him as he was leaving the conference.
Shieh urged the protesters not to launch physical attacks against him while McDonald's staff called the police.
However, the protesters had fled the scene by the time two police cars arrived.
Tsai Chung-li (蔡仲禮), director-general of the information division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US, said the office chose to hold the conference at McDonald's in a bid to maintain administrative impartiality because Shieh was on a personal trip to the US.
Tsai expressed regret over the incident and apologized to Shieh.
When asked for comment, Shieh said such a demonstration was part of the fruitful democratic achievement owing to the sacrifice of Taiwan's democracy pioneers.
If the protest had taken place in the authoritarian era, these people would have been blacklisted and banned from returning to Taiwan, he said.
Shieh said he could accept the demonstration, but questioned whether the demonstrators had ever conducted a retrospection on the past wrongdoings of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
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