Taiwan blames trolls from China for issuing fake apology to WHO chief

After WHO chief accused Taiwan of “racial slurs” against him, trolls from China pretending to be Taiwanese are apparently issuing a 'fake apology' to the United Nations health agency. According to Taiwanese media, the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau of Taiwan retaliated on WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ claims of “personal attacks” by citing their findings of the inquiry. At a media briefing on April 10, a Taiwanese official said that their investigation has indicated that accounts from China are orchestrating the row between WHO and Taiwan.

While Taiwan had earlier accused the United Nations health agency of neglecting its suggestions in the preliminary stage of COVID-19 outbreak, the WHO head had recently responded. Not only did Ghebreyesus mentioned an ‘online campaign’ against him over the course of the last three months, but also said that he received death threats that had originated from Taiwan. However, within few hours of WHO chief’s remarks, Twitter accounts had begun posting apologies for Ghebreyesus. However, now Taiwan claims that they were from accounts originating from China and people attempted to impersonate Taiwanese.

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Chinese social media amplified the reach of posts

According to media reports, the Cyber Security Office head in Taiwan, Chang Yu-jen said that since the posts with apologies shared by Twitter users from the mainland were later shared on the Chinese social media, they ‘amplified’ their reach. Taiwanese authorities even traced back to first such messages of apologies for WHO chief to two usernames, @TMGNews_CN and @RFXY_China. According to the bureau, both these accounts have the description in Chinese language and even suspect them to be a media outlet along with a radio station in Xuzhou. The bureau official also said that apologies were posted in Chinese except one also had an English-language translation.

After these findings, the Chinese social media users even issued multiple posts of rallying including, “remember to use the format” and “it is fun to play this game” in a bid to encourage others to personify themselves as Taiwanese and join the “fake apology” campaign. Chang has supposedly mentioned other evidence that has indicated towards China and claimed that the bureau combed through at least three months of such posts on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. However, Chang denied having found any racist or personal attacks against the WHO chief.

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