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Protest against Red
Cross takes a ‘political’ turn
By Loa Iok-sin / Staff Reporter
The unilateral cancelation by the social networking Web site Facebook of an
online petition protesting against the Red Cross Society of the Republic of
China’s (ROC) handling of donations for Japanese earthquake victims has sparked
accusations of “political manipulation” among Internet users.
“I feel like someone’s keeping an eye on me, I feel afraid and I feel angry at
the same time,” netizen Subing (酥餅), who created the online petition with
another netizen, Miawko (妙子), on Facebook, wrote on his personal blog.
He was speaking about Facebook’s unilateral disabling of the petition page —
which attracted support from more than 30,000 Facebook members within days — on
Tuesday.
According to the Red Cross Society of the ROC’s latest figures released on
Monday, it has received more than NT$1.8 billion (US$62 million), but so far has
only transferred about NT$400 million to the Japanese Red Cross Society.
The organization said it was still awaiting its Japanese counterpart’s plans for
the remaining funds.
However, the delay has caused anger among the public and triggered online
protests such as the one that Subing and Miawko launched. Many have also asked
for a refund of their donations.
In a message to Subing, Facebook said the page was removed because “this Event
appears to be an unsolicited commercial communication [spam] and has been
deleted via technical measures.” The removal of the page raised suspicions among
Internet users.
When Subing and Miawko opened several other petition pages on Facebook with
titles bearing the name “Red Cross Society of the ROC” on Tuesday, all were also
removed.
“This is too much. Are we under martial law again? Will we all be arrested?”
Internet user Pei-fang (佩芳) wrote in a message on Subing’s blog.
Others suspected that cacaFly, Facebook’s advertising representative in Taiwan,
had intervened for political reasons.
“I don’t trust Facebook — look who is representing Facebook in Taiwan. They
could suppress freedom of speech through technical tricks,” Internet user
Spieler said in a message on Subing’s blog.
CacaFly founder and chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) helped President
Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) manage his Facebook page before becoming Facebook’s
advertising representative in Taiwan. Ma and Red Cross Society of the ROC
president C.V. Chen (陳長文) also have a close personal relationship.
“I think we should complain to Facebook’s headquarters, because Facebook’s
representative in Taiwan could use keyword filtering to remove pages unfriendly
to the Red Cross,” netizen pfge said on Miawko’s blog.
Chiu rebutted the accusations by telephone.
“Basically, we’re only Facebook’s advertising representative in Taiwan. We only
take care of advertising on Facebook in Taiwan,” Chiu said. “[Facebook’s]
operation is handled by Facebook headquarters in the US and has nothing to do
with us.”
After several failed attempts, Subing created a “group” page — instead of an
“event page” — on Facebook protesting against the Red Cross Society of the ROC
late on Tuesday.
The new page remained online at press time.
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