Somebody, Anybody, Nobody, Everybody

A strange tale in the Taipei Times today. A Taiwanese reported that a letter sent to him from the US marked 'Republic of Taiwan' in English and Chinese arrived with the aforesaid mentioned national title mysteriously blacked out:

A volunteer at a pro-independence organization yesterday accused Chunghwa Post of infringing his personal freedom and privacy after a package delivered to him with “Republic of Taiwan (台灣國)” in its address was tampered with.

Kuo Chien-kuo (郭建國), a volunteer for the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan, said a friend sent him the package from the US that arrived in Taiwan last Friday.

Kuo’s friend sent the package to the alliance’s office using the address “100, Chindao East Rd, Taipei, Republic of Taiwan.”

Kuo said that a security guard in the office building received the package on his behalf. When Kuo obtained it he was surprised to discover that the words “Republic of Taiwan” on the package, both in Chinese characters and in English letters, had been blacked out.

Kuo claims the US Postal service wouldn't have done this so that leaves someone at Chunghua Post (Formerly Taiwan Post, Formerly formerly Chunghua Post) as the main suspect. But Tseng Chin-hsiung (曾錦雄), director of Chunghwa Post’s mail and business operation department claimed that they hadn't done this because they wouldn't have had the time to do it (owing to the large volume of letters processed daily). Furthermore, he stated for the record that they had no right to make the changes or black out words in the address.

My intuition says that this is a classic case of 'Somebody altered the name but Anybody said Nobody could have done it so Everybody decided that it was best just to walk away from the question altogether'.

So ... to see if this was a one off I have asked a relative to send me a letter with the same address format and see if that too gets altered. If it does we can start to build up a case that this is either the work of rogue elements within Chunghua post or a systematic institutional policy.

For the record, I personally don't like the term 'Republic of Taiwan', I think the name 'Taiwan' alone is good enough for the country - the Chinese 台灣國 as I understand it simply means Taiwan country rather than insinuating whether this is a republic or other political system.

I shall post again to let you all know the results.