Supreme Court upholds sentences given to pro-China campaigners

Taipei, Jan. 29 (CNA) Taiwan's Supreme Court has rejected the appeals of the chairman and six other members of a pro-Chinese unification political party convicted of national security offenses.

In its ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Court said it found no violation of the law in the lower court's judgment against Chu Hung-yi (屈宏義), leader of the Rehabilitation Alliance Party, upholding his 10-year prison sentence.

The court also upheld the convictions of Huang Kuei-kun (黃桂坤), Tai Hsueh-wen (戴學文), Lin Chien-hua (林健華), Chu Hsien-huan (朱賢寰), Yu Tien-min (余天民) and Liao Yung-ching (廖永清), whose prison sentences range from three years and six months to eight years and six months.

All seven were indicted in August 2024 by the Taichung branch of the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of violating Taiwan's National Security Act and Anti-Infiltration Act.

The case stemmed from a 2022 investigation into Huang, a Miaoli County Council candidate, and later expanded when he joined the newly formed Rehabilitation Alliance Party the following year.

According to prosecutors, Chu Hung-yi previously served as a senior officer in Taiwan's Army and spent several years doing business in China after retiring.

While in China, he allegedly contacted intelligence officers and agreed to accept Chinese funding to recruit other retired military officers and build a political organization, which later included Huang and five others.

After founding the party in 2023, Chu Hung-yi recruited four unsuspecting candidates, including veteran actor Liu Shang-chien (劉尚謙), to run for the Legislature in Taiwan's January 2024 election.

After estimating their campaign costs, the chairman sent a funding request to a contact in China, and later received NT$2 million (US$63,860) in money transfers on WeChat, as well as 150,000 Chinese yuan via "underground" money transfers, prosecutors alleged at the time.

None of the party's candidates were elected.

Meanwhile, Chu Hung-yi also instructed his party members to carry out other tasks, such as compiling a list of all general officers in Taiwan's military, and photographing and collecting the GPS coordinates of Taiwanese military installations and the American Institute in Taiwan's Taipei office, which he sent to his contact in China via WeChat.

The sites photographed also included the Alishan Radar Station, Jialutang Beach in Pingtung County, and the Renshou and Baoli camps of the Joint Operations Training Base Command in Pingtung, prosecutors said.

When he was interrogated, Chu Hung-yi claimed the money he received was payment from a friend in China for appraising antiques, and that he did not know why he was asked to provide photographs of military installations.

Taiwan's National Security Act prohibits the initiation, funding, directing or development of organizations on behalf of foreign countries or foreign hostile forces.

In June 2025, the Taichung branch of the Taiwan High Court found Chu Hung-yi and six party members guilty. Their subsequent appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court, making the verdicts final.