Chinese dissident Wang Dan (王丹) yesterday rejected a report by the Central News Agency (CNA) that said he has admitted receiving US$400,000 in subsidies from former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
CNA reported that during a Taiwan High Court hearing on Friday conducted behind closed doors, Wang admitted that he received US$400,000 in subsidies from Chen when he was in power between 2000 and 2008.
In a statement posted on his Facebook page yesterday, Wang said the content of the CNA report was untrue and that he was not approached for verification of the material.
Wang said because his comments at the closed-door hearing pertained to national security and should not be made public, he would not elaborate on what he had said in court.
Wang added that to express his protest against the news agency, he would not hold interviews with CNA until it offers an apology.
Friday’s court hearing was held as part of the judicial process investigating Chen and his family for allegedly embezzling money from the state affairs fund, the news report said.
Chen and his wife, Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), were accused of embezzling more than NT$100 million (US$3.45 million) from the fund when Chen was in office.
Chen has argued that parts of the fund were used to finance Chinese activists, including Wang, in his effort to spread democracy to China.
Chen had asked the court to summon Wang and former minister of foreign affairs James Huang (黃志芳) to testify at the hearing.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS