(9 Sep 2024)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Taipei City – 8 September 2024
++NIGHT SHOTS++
1. Various of protesters in support of former Taipei mayor and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je chanting slogans and waving cardboard signs UPSOUND: “Procedure, justice! Legislation, justice!”
2. Wide of protest
3. Mid of protesters
4. SOUNDBITE (Mandarin) Sunny Chen, finance industry worker and Taipei City resident:
++SOUNDBITE STARTS ON PREVIOUS SHOT AND OVERLAID SHOT 5++
“If one day Ko Wen-je comes out of jail, I am not sure when, I would ask him to keep fighting for Taiwan.”
5. Top shots of protest
6. SOUNDBITE (Mandarin) Anna Lin, Taipei City resident:
++SOUNDBITE STARTS ON PREVIOUS SHOT AND OVERLAID SHOT 7++
“We supporters still support Ko Wen-je. We the volunteers are still confident about him. We strongly believe that he is innocent.”
7. Various of protest and Ko Wen-je supporters
STORYLINE:
Thousands of supporters of former Taipei City Mayor, Ko Wen-je, gathered outside Taiwan’s parliament on Sunday evening to pressure the authorities to release him.
Organizer’s claimed a turnout of over 10-thousand people.
Ko has been detained since September 5 for allegedly taking bribes from a real estate developer.
But protesters say he is innocent and called for justice.
Ko was returned to detention on Thursday night in handcuffs after a legal panel overruled an earlier order allowing him to return home.
He is being held incommunicado, unable to speak to anyone outside of the facility in which he is being held.
Ko’s case involves alleged illegal favours and payments from a web of business people and local level politicians brought to light by an urban redevelopment project that stood to bring investors massive profits by avoiding required reviews.
He has the option of further appealing on Friday.
Despite intense media attention, the case appears to be having little effect on Taiwan’s robust democracy and independent legal system.
Ko heads the Taiwan People’s Party and drew support in this year’s elections from young Taiwanese looking for an alternative to the two-party system that has governed Taiwanese politics for the last two decades.
Taiwan has been dominated by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the remainder of the Nationalist Party that fled to Taiwan after the Communist Party’s takeover of mainland China in 1949.
Ko and others were named in May in a scandal in which the developer of the downtown Core Pacific Center shopping centre was given permission to massively expand the floor space available for lease during Ko’s 2014-2022 term as mayor.
Ko has said he had no knowledge or involvement in the case, despite evidence suggesting he was aware and also participated in other questionable financial arrangements.
He can be held for up to four months while the investigation continues.
The Taipei District Court ruled that his continued detention was necessary because of the amount of funds involved, the seriousness of the alleged crimes and the likelihood of him working in cooperation with others involved to hide evidence and manufacture testimony.
Ko finished third with about a quarter of the vote in this year’s election, which was won by the DPP’s William Lai Ching-te, whose party favours continued de-facto independence from China.
The TPP won just under 3% of the seats in the legislature.
AP video shot by Taijing Wu
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