Taiwan indicts 5 accused of trying to injure comedian who mocks Xi and Chinese Communist Party

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Five people have been indicted in Taiwan on charges they tried to injure a comedian who mocks the Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party in his performances.

Comedian Huang Yihao told Taiwan’s Central News Agency that he had parked his scooter in an alley last month when a car suddenly swerved toward him, striking him and his scooter. He escaped severe injury, but said his initial thought was “could this be the CCP coming after me?” Then, he said, the people in the car got out and apologized, and invited him to sit in their vehicle, which he turned down.

The five suspects, who are all Taiwanese, are accused of accepting 450,000 New Taiwan dollars (US$13,900) to “break arms and legs” of Huang so he couldn’t perform on stage, New Taipei District prosecutors said Wednesday.

The five suspects, identified only by their surnames Zheng, You, Huang, Fan and Liao, received directions and funding from someone nicknamed “K” from mainland China, the prosecutors’ statement said.

“K” asked Zheng to collect the comedian’s personal information and to injure him badly enough to require hospitalization and prevent him from performing as scheduled on Sept. 20.

Zheng installed a tracking device on the comedian’s scooter and followed him during July and August. He received NT$250,000 ($7,700) after passing the information to “K.” Zheng and You then planned to a staged car crash to injure the comedian, assigning the task to another man surnamed Huang, who recruited Fan and Liao to help, according to the statement.

On the afternoon of Sept. 11, the suspect Huang drove the car while Liao filmed from the passenger seat and Fan watched in an alley. Huang stopped the car after hearing the comedian scream, but the comedian was not seriously injured. Dissatisfied with the outcome, “K” refused to pay the remaining NT$200,000 ($6,200), the statement said.

Prosecutors are seeking prison terms ranging from two years and seven months to five years and six months.

Before the alleged attempt in September, charges of intimidation endangering public safety and property damage were filed against two other people who allegedly spread paint and human waste in May outside a comedy club in Taipei where Huang performed, according to local media reports.

China claims Taiwan, an island about 160 kilometers (100 miles) off its east coast, as its territory. The two split during the civil war that brought the Communists to power in China in 1949, with the losing Nationalists setting up their own government in Taiwan.

In one video clip that Huang shared on his YouTube channel, he compares Xi to Winnie the Pooh and criticizes the CCP for imposing Hong Kong’s national security law and COVID-19 lockdowns across China.

“If people are already being treated this way for criticizing the CCP even before it has come to rule Taiwan, how can we possibly expect to retain our current freedom of speech should the CCP ever gain control over Taiwan?” Huang said in a post on Wednesday on his Facebook page, commenting on the case.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called such violence “a malicious attempt to enforce political silence” which meant to “create a chilling effect” to “erode the space for free expression and public discourse.”

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council “strongly condemned” the use of “transnational repression” to harm people in Taiwan and warned there would be “absolutely no leniency” for those who participate in such acts.

In 2022, five men accused of acting on behalf of the Chinese government have been charged with brazen and wide-ranging schemes to stalk and harass Chinese dissidents in the United States, including by seeking to derail the election bid of a little-known congressional candidate, according to the U.S. Justice Department.