Taipei prosecutors yesterday indicted the heads of two Chinese hometown associations in Taiwan for organizing a China-funded trip to Anhui Province for local Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials before January’s elections.
The presidents of the Taiwan and Taipei Anhui Province hometown associations, a man and woman surnamed Lee (李) and Song (宋) respectively, were charged with contravening the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法), the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement.
“Hometown associations” are social organizations for people who immigrated to Taiwan from the same part of China, as well as their descendants. Most of them came to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War.
Photo: Taipei Times
Prosecutors said Lee and Song acted at the request of Liao Jian (繆劍), head of the Anhui Province Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), to recruit 24 KMT officials and borough wardens from Taipei’s Wanhua (萬華) and Nangang (南港) districts for the trip.
Under the terms of the trip, which ran from Oct. 29 to Nov. 5 last year, participants had to cover their own airfare and pay NT$16,830 for the first night’s accommodation.
All other food, hotel and transportation expenses, totaling about NT$33,000 per person, were paid for by the Anhui TAO, as a means of influencing voters prior to the Jan. 13 elections, prosecutors said.
After arriving in Anhui on Oct. 29, the participants were taken on guided tours of Hefei, Luan and Huaibei, where they met or were accompanied by Anhui TAO officials, as well as the deputy head of the province’s United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, prosecutors said.
The tour group was also taken to multiple lunch and dinner banquets, at which TAO officials gave speeches urging them to oppose Taiwanese independence and think of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait as “one family,” they said.
At one such event on Oct. 31, Lee urged participants to support the KMT presidential candidate, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), and expressed hope that the election would bring about “major changes” that would allow the KMT to engage more with China, they added.
In the indictment, prosecutors said Lee and Song knowingly contravened prohibitions on accepting funding from “a source of infiltration” to support a specific political party or candidate.
The 24 trip participants were not charged, as there was insufficient evidence to show that they understood the quid pro quo relationship between the trip’s funder and their support for a political candidate, prosecutors said.
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