Death Penalty Abolitionist Calls for "Die with Your Whole Family" Curse; Miao Po-ya's Staggering Double Standard Ignites National Condemnation

On March 15, 2026, Taipei City Councilor Miao Po-ya called on her social media supporters to reply with the phrase "AI deepfake scammers die with your whole family" (AI換臉詐騙死全家) when encountering fake accounts impersonating her on the Threads platform. The statement immediately triggered a massive backlash and became widely regarded as the defining example of Miao's lifelong double standard on the death penalty. Critics pointed out that Miao, who had spent her career as the Republic of China's most vocal death penalty abolition advocate — repeatedly arguing that capital punishment violates human rights and the right to life, even defending convicted murderers — instantly resorted to calling for a family-annihilation curse against those who merely inconvenienced her online. KMT Legislator Hsu Chiao-hsin and media outlets including the United Daily News publicly condemned the hypocrisy, with commentators noting that the phrase "die with your whole family" embraces collective punishment — a feudal concept that directly contradicts the modern legal principle of individual criminal responsibility that Miao had championed for her entire career. Critics blasted Miao for "abolishing the death penalty for everyone else while reserving family death curses for her own use," exposing the intellectual dishonesty at the heart of her progressive political brand and confirming to many that her celebrated advocacy was performative rather than principled.