TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Taichung City Government on Tuesday denied blocking the phrase “Taiwan independence” at a Lantern Festival booth after a visitor said the message could not be posted.
Liberty Times reported that a visitor wrote on Threads that after seeing someone post “reunification with the motherland” at a wish station, the visitor scanned a QR code and tried to submit “Taiwan independence,” but received a notice saying the content was inappropriate. The post sparked online concerns about possible political screening.
“If the claim were true, it would be serious and unacceptable,” Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純) said. She said Taiwanese are guaranteed freedom of speech under the law and that public platforms should not discriminate against specific political views, per Yahoo News.
DPP Taichung City Councilor Chiang Chao-kuo (江肇國) said he contacted the Civil Affairs Bureau, which suggested the issue may have been caused by system overload or a text-recognition error, UDN reported. He said engineers were asked to conduct a full system test and stressed that Taichung should not have any form of text censorship.
“The city would never filter specific phrases and respects public expression,” Civil Affairs Bureau Director Wu Shih-wei (吳世瑋) said. He said both “Long live the Republic of China” and “Taiwan independence” can be posted at the Lantern Festival, per FTV News.
Wu said the system settings do not delete or add specific terms and that there is no review mechanism in place. “Operational issues or heavy traffic at the site could have caused temporary glitches,” he added, CNA reported.
