《TAIPEI TIMES》 2024 Elections: Two detained over China junkets

EXPENSES PAID: The party officials were detained due to prosecutors believing the pair would be a flight risk or destroy evidence after taking about 20 people on trips

/ Staff Writer, with CNA

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Two officials from the Reunification Alliance Party have been detained on suspicion of breaching election interference rules by organizing trips to China at the request of the Chinese government, the Pingtung District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday.

The suspects were identified only by their family names, Chang （張）, who heads the party’s Pingtung chapter, and Huang （黃）, who is the chapter’s director-general, the office said in a news release.

In September and October last year, Chang and Huang had allegedly organized a trip to China’s Hunan and Shanxi provinces, in which about 20 Pingtung residents participated.

The trip came at the request of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office （TAO）, prosecutors said, indicating that the cost of accommodation, meals, local transportation and activity fees incurred while in China were covered by Chinese local authorities, and the participants only paid the cost of the airfare.

While there, the Taiwanese group also met with local TAO officials, who spoke about “peaceful reunification” and the so-called “1992 consensus” — a political term which indicates that Taiwan and China belong to “one China” — and mentioned that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are “one family,” prosecutors said. Former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi （蘇起） in 2006 said he made the term up.

After the trip, Chang and Huang held a meeting of the Pingtung chapter where they asked members, including those who went on the China trip, to vote for a “certain political party” and “candidates” in Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections on Saturday, prosecutors said, suspecting the event came at the instruction of the TAO.

Raids were carried out at the residences of Chang and Huang on Thursday, during which the two and other participants on the China trip were questioned, prosecutors said.

Chang and Huang are being investigated for suspected contravention of the Anti-Infiltration Act （反滲透法） and the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act （總統副總統選舉罷免法）, prosecutors said.

After questioning, prosecutors said they filed a request to detain the two, as they could potentially flee the country and collude with others to destroy evidence during an ongoing investigation.

The request was granted by the Pingtung District Court on Friday.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES