Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Cabinet relaxes rules on political files

Taipei Times

The Executive Yuan yesterday approved amendments that would eliminate a requirement to keep political files and national security information permanently confidential.

When political files are categorized as classified national security information, the content should be declassified after 40 years, the amendments state.

The amendments to the Political Archives Act (政治檔案條例) and the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法) are part of government efforts to pursue transitional justice on behalf of those who were politically persecuted following the 228 Incident in 1947 and during the Martial Law era from 1949 to 1987.

The Hamas massacre of civilians

Maya Yaron

At 6.30am on Oct. 7, hundreds of armed Hamas terrorists invaded Israel from Gaza. They took over Israeli towns and villages, broke into homes and slaughtered entire families. Some civilians were burned in their homes. Others were dragged outside and brutally executed. Young children witnessed their mothers being butchered. Some villages were burned to the ground.

At the same time, Hamas terrorists infiltrated a music festival attended by thousands of young people, killing everyone in their way. Hundreds of young men and women who were there to celebrate life and music were murdered.

The Hamas terrorists returned to Gaza, parading desecrated and naked bodies of young women through the streets, as hundreds of observers celebrated and handed out candy.

Raise penalties for leaks, legislators say

Taipei Times

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the National Security Act (國家安全法) that would ensure elected representatives have half the normal sentence added to their term if convicted of leaking state secrets.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) is under investigation for allegedly leaking confidential material about Taiwan’s Indigenous Defense Submarine Program to South Korea.

Local media reported that during closed-door meetings of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee at which details of the submarine program were reviewed, Ma brought in a personal device to call her aides, and refused to sign a confidentiality agreement.

Look to India on Chinese infiltration

Paul Lin 林保華

On Oct. 3, police in New Delhi raided and searched the residences of several staff members of the NewsClick online news site and detained several of them for interrogation. According to an investigative report published in the New York Times in August under the headline “A global web of Chinese propaganda leads to a US tech mogul,” NewsClick’s main funder is a 69-year-old US citizen named Neville Roy Singham, who established the Chicago-based software and information technology consultancy Thoughtworks and currently lives in Shanghai.

NewsClick, founded in 2009, defines itself as an independent news medium focusing on “social justice” that speaks out for “oppressed communities.” However, the New York Times report says NewsClick’s reports are full of Chinese government talking points such as that “China’s history continues to inspire the working classes.” Many organizations, from the Massachusetts-based think tank Tricontinental and a South African political party to a Brazilian news organization, have traces of Singham’s funding with the aim of spreading China’s “grand external propaganda.” According to the report, Singham-funded media have used funding from the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Shanghai Municipal Committee to publish videos on YouTube and “spread China’s voice to the world.”

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