Taiwan Falun Dafa Association Charges Newspaper Executives With Fraud

The Taiwan Falun Dafa Association has filed a criminal complaint against two top executives of a major newspaper in Taiwan.
Taiwan Falun Dafa Association Charges Newspaper Executives With Fraud
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Zhong Yuan
6/9/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/court.jpg" alt="The Taiwan Falun Dafa Association submitted lawsuits to the Taipei District Court against the United Daily News on June 8 for falsifying documents and aggravated libel.  (Lin Bodong/The Epoch Times)" title="The Taiwan Falun Dafa Association submitted lawsuits to the Taipei District Court against the United Daily News on June 8 for falsifying documents and aggravated libel.  (Lin Bodong/The Epoch Times)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1818811"/></a>
The Taiwan Falun Dafa Association submitted lawsuits to the Taipei District Court against the United Daily News on June 8 for falsifying documents and aggravated libel.  (Lin Bodong/The Epoch Times)
TAIPEI—The Taiwan Falun Dafa Association has filed a criminal complaint against two top executives of a major newspaper in Taiwan.

Professor Chang Ching-Hsi, chairman of the Taiwan Falun Dafa Association (TFDA), submitted a lawsuit on June 8 to the Taipei District Court against Mr. Hu Litai and Mr. Luo Guojun, president and chief editor of United Daily News, for falsifying documents and aggravated libel. United Daily News is one of the top three newspapers in Taiwan.

On May 11, United Daily News published a notice titled “Announcement to Taiwan Falun Gong practitioners” on its A10 page. The content was presented in the first person as coming from Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong and announced the dismissal of the Falun Dafa Association.

The announcement declared that any Falun Gong practitioners who attended any activities organized by the TFDA would be considered as having stopped their practice of Falun Gong.

Professor Chang said this announcement was forged—it was not written by Mr. Li. In fact, Mr. Li has sent a notarized and certified statement saying the announcement in the newspaper is a fraud, that the newspaper was not authorized by him to publish this announcement, and that the content of the notice is not his intention.

Professor Chang submitted Mr. Li’s statement along with the lawsuit to the Taipei District Court.

Professor Chang said that in publishing the fraudulent announcement in a very visible page in the newspaper, the United Daily News harmed both him and the TFDA. Moreover, he said the motive of publishing the announcement was to harm TFDA and himself as chairman of the TFDA.

Therefore, Chang said that in addition to the charge of falsifying documents, he is also charging United Daily News with aggravated libel.

The Taipei District Prosecutor’s Office now must investigate the complaint filed by professor Chang and decide whether to prosecute.

Mr. Li, the founder of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), was named 1 of the 50 most-influential people in Asia in 2001 by Asia Weekly.

Falun Dafa was introduced to Taiwan in 1995. After the Chinese Communist Party began persecuting Falun Gong in China in 1999 it became very popular among all segments of Taiwanese society. Currently an estimated 500,000 Taiwanese have taken up the spiritual meditation and exercise practice.

The Epoch Times called United Daily News for comments on the lawsuit but has not received a reply.

Read the original Chinese article

 

Zhong Yuan is a researcher focused on China’s political system, the country’s democratization process, human rights situation, and Chinese citizens’ livelihood. He began writing commentaries for the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times in 2020.
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