The GIO and the KMT, a Joint History of Murder, Intrigue, and Cover Up? Wake Up Taiwan.

Wednesday March 25, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Kuo Kuan-ying is not a career diplomat. He has always been an employee of the Government Information Office (GIO) and that may explain his lack of diplomatic professionalism. Nonetheless the hate-mongering case of Kuo Kuan-ying took a new turn today when he admitted that the GIO knew and had covered up the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) murder of Henry Liu in 1984. Kuo was working for the GIO at that time and stationed in New York. Perhaps out of kindness or perhaps as a warning, he seemed to break with government "ethics" and revealed to Liu's wife the true story of what had happened. Liu's wife also confirmed yesterday that Kuo had told her such at that time.

Henry Liu's murder was one of the many high profile murders of Taiwanese in the early 1980s and the GIO cover up is characteristic of that office. Another case was the murder/death of Chen Wen-chen, the USA Carnegie Mellon professor (1981). In that case Tina Chou, a reporter lost her Taiwanese reporter's credentials when she revealed that the coroner's report showed that Chen had not died of natural causes. James Soong was head of GIO at that time. He got Ms. Chou banned from reporting in Taiwan and sent her packing from the country. In this case it also came out that the objective coroners brought in from the outside did not issue their report right away. They waited until they were safely out of the country and back in the United States before saying the cause of death was not natural. They did not want to meet a similar fate as Chen. Wake up Taiwan.

James Soong had also been head of GIO during the Kaohsiung Incident (December 1979) where the GIO cover up of the police and military brutality reads like a make believe fairy tale. Here were the police (the good guys) and these unruly Taiwanese peasants wanting their un-deserved human rights. The "ill-bred" Taiwanese attacked the innocent police causing them much bodily harm and put so many of them in the hospital. In stark contrast, it was later revealed that the riot had been a set-up and had actually been instigated by police infiltrators. The Taiwanese were the victims and not the police.

Is it déJà vu or what? When you read the newspaper accounts of the Kaohsiung Incident, and compare them with today's GIO explanation of police brutality during the visit of China's Chen Yun-lin, there is a remarkable similarity. In both cases the GIO pinned the blame on the spectators and protesters and not the police; in both cases it was made to appear that the main injuries were sustained by the police and not the protestors. In Chen Yun-lin's recent visit, there was a large discrepancy between the GIO figures of who was injured and those of outside organizations like Amnesty International. Wake up Taiwan.

It is an accepted fact that the task of the GIO is to put the best possible spin on the ruling party's actions. Its role is public relations as well as providing information on matters concerning the president and his party. The politically correct GIO phrase is "mass media guidance and regulation." Naturally, one expects that it will fudge and embellish a little in its reports. But does this mean that the GIO should promote falsehood and lies? Where then is the line between embellishments and lies? Further, is it also the GIO's role to act as the hatchet man for those that criticize the President and his policies? The KMT GIO crossed that line many times in the past.

So, then it is no surprise that people like Kuo have still remained in the employ of GIO. How many in the GIO are good KMT "loyal soldiers" from the past. How many like Kuo see themselves as Chinese and not Taiwanese. They are the "superior Mainlanders" who as Kuo says have the "right to tell lies in the face of enemies." One presumes that the Taiwanese are their enemies.

But that is not all. The most damning fact of all is this, that if Kuo, a low ranking GIO staff in 1984 knew of the murder of Henry Liu, how many more higher ranking KMT members also knew of that murder and all the other murders and crimes of the past and kept silent? How many more KMT have always known of these murders and have kept silent or "told lies in the face of enemies." Wake up Taiwan, wake up, these are the people that rule your country and control the government. The leeches are not only at your throat, they cover your body. They have killed your youth and pillaged your country in the name of their superior righteousness. Is it not time to rid yourself of this pestilence and vote the vermin out? December is not too far off. Let this be your beginning.