The controversial pro-unification owner of the Biyun Temple, Wei Ming-jen (魏明仁), flew to Hong Kong a day after the Changhua County government began demolishing his additions to the temple, a national security officer said yesterday on condition of anonymity.
The county on Wednesday sent demolition crews to the shrine in Ershuei Township (二水) and Wei left Taiwan the next day, the official said.
Wei said his “retreat from his Ershuei base” followed the example of Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) strategic retreat during the Chinese Communist Party’s battles with the Nationalist Army in China’s Yunnan Province about 70 years ago, Wei said an interview with crntt.com, a Chinese-language digital media outlet, published on Saturday.
Photo: Chen Kuan-pei, Taipei Times
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration decided to level his “base” because it feared it would grow and because it wants to upset China by working with the US, Wei was quoted as saying.
Wei was talking nonsense, and fewer than 10 supporters were with him as the additions to the temple were torn down, which is why he fled to his “mother country,” the official said.
He bought a one-way ticket to Hong Kong on Thursday night, which suggested he was not planning to return to Taiwan any time soon, the official added.
Wei’s actions, such as ousting the Buddhist nuns who had resided at the temple, and hitting a civil servant inspecting the temple, had been intolerable for many Taiwanese, the official said.
He should not have mistaken “a hostile country for his mother country” and promoted communist ideas at the temple, the official said.
Wei was arrested on Wednesday by police for obstructing an officer in the discharge of their duties, but was released on bail of NT$100,000, but there was no order barring him from leaving the country, the Changhua District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday.
It was still investigating the actions that led to his arrest, it said.
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