Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker Chiu Yi (邱毅) yesterday criticized the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government’s handling of two cases of vandalism against statues and urged the candidates in the KMT’s chairperson election to refrain from trying to appease supporters of the pan-green and pan-blue camps.
Chiu on Facebook lashed out at two masked members of the pro-independence Taiwan Nation Founding Engineering Team (台灣建國工程隊) who on Saturday decapitated and sprayed paint on a statue of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) in Taipei’s Yangmingshan National Park.
“I call them sons of bitches, because I despise them. Look at [China Unification Promotion Party member] Lee Cheng-lung (李承龍): He immediately admitted to decapitating a statue of [Japanese engineer] Yoichi Hatta and was able to talk about it cheerfully,” Chiu wrote.
On the contrary, the “pro-independence cowards” hid their faces behind masks like “low-born thieves,” Chiu said.
Accusing the DPP government of applying double standards in the handling of the two incidents, Chiu said that police set up a task force and vowed to quickly solve the Hatta case, but sought to downplay and trivialize the attack on the statue of Chiang.
Chiu called on the candidates in the KMT’s chairperson election to clarify their stance on the issue and refrain from engaging in hypocritical rhetoric in a bid to pacify both political camps.
“Stop spouting bullshit like we should not decapitate Chiang’s statutes or Hatta’s statues,” Chiu said, apparently referring to a remark by KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) last week that decapitating the statues of Hatta and Chiang were equally inappropriate.
Hung is seeking re-election as KMT chairperson against five other candidates. The election is scheduled for May 20.
Meanwhile, the latest act of vandalism against a statue of Chiang has sparked calls for vengeance from the pan-blue camp.
Retired lieutenant general Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷) on Saturday wrote on Facebook that the DPP’s continued acquiescence to and tacit encouragement of vandalism against Chiang’s statues would only ignite a new wave of anti-Japanese sentiment in Taiwan.
“If pro-independence groups and pro-Japan individuals continue to damage [Chiang’s statues] and incite ethnic conflict, the Hatta statue will not be the only thing destroyed, but all totems that remind Japanese” would be destroyed, Wu said.
Wu urged President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration to stop ignoring the vicious cycle of vindictive vandalism, in which different camps have been seeking revenge against each other by decapitating the statues of the other side’s “worshiped figures.”
Letting ideology guide the government’s handling of vandalism against the statues of Chiang or Republic of China founder Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), while putting Japanese on a pedestal, would only widen the divide between pro-independence and pro-unification camps.
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