Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Hacking attack on DPP a potential ‘Watergate’

Taipei Times

The recent hacking attacks targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials and senior staff at Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) presidential campaign office could be Taiwan’s version of the Watergate scandal, a former official in charge of electronic communications for the government has said.

The DPP last week announced that the e-mail accounts of senior officials and staff at Tsai’s office had been hacked into and that confidential information had been stolen. In a press release, the party said that an investigation had traced the attacks back to IP addresses from Xinhua news agency bureaus in Beijing and Malaysia, addresses in Australia, as well as the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission (RDEC) in Taipei.

Beijing sends anti-terrorism unit to Xinjiang

Taipei Times

China has sent an elite anti-terrorism unit to the restive far-western region of Xinjiang in the wake of recent violence there and ahead of an international trade convention, a state newspaper reported yesterday.

The Snow Leopard Commando Unit will be based in Aksu City, about halfway between Kashgar, where two violent attacks took place last month, and Urumqi, the China Daily quoted a spokesman for the Xinjiang People’s Armed Police as saying.

At least 20 people died late last month in the two attacks in Kashgar, in the western part of Xinjiang — turmoil the government blames on Muslim extremists.

China’s cultural harmony cracking

Brahma Chellaney

In the face of spreading civil unrest among China’s Uighur population, the Chinese government’s love-fest with its all-weather ally, Pakistan, may be starting to sour. Indeed, the authorities in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region are charging that a prominent Uighur separatist that they captured had received terrorist training in Pakistan. No less embarrassing for Pakistan, the charge came while its intelligence chief, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, was holding talks in Beijing on securing greater Chinese support to blunt the growing US pressure on Islamabad.

No country has done more than China to prop up the Pakistani state — support that has included transfers of missiles and nuclear weapons technology. By playing the Kashmir card against India in various ways — even deploying People’s Liberation Army units in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir near the line of control with India — China has clearly signaled in recent years its desire to use its alliance with Pakistan to squeeze India. Given the level of China’s strategic investments in Pakistan, the bilateral relationship is unlikely to change.

DPP files suit over Ma’s Facebook page transfer

Taipei Times

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday filed a lawsuit against President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and one of his former top aides, accusing them of corruption for turning the management of Ma’s Facebook page over from the Presidential Office to a private organization without following proper procedures.

“It is ridiculous to turn a -government-funded program into a private asset. President Ma and his re-election campaign office should be held accountable,” DPP spokesman Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said outside the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office.

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