Former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) has been ordered to report to Taichung Prison’s Pei Teh Hospital next Friday to undergo an evaluation to see if she is well enough to serve a lengthy jail sentence, her son said yesterday.
Chen Chih-chung (陳致中) said his family was deeply worried about the decision by judicial authorities because his mother, who is paralyzed from the waist down, cannot care for herself on a daily basis.
“If she were forcibly incarcerated, it would be no different than killing her,” Chen said.
He said that under the law, prisons should reject convicts who lack the ability to look after themselves, and he urged doctors to make a careful diagnosis of his mother’s condition.
Last November, the Supreme Court ruled that Wu and her husband, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), should serve a total of 19 years in jail for taking bribes during his term as president.
The Taiwan High Court in December set the sentence at 17.5 years each for the couple.
Chen Shui-bian, who had been held at a detention center since late 2008, was moved to Taipei Prison in Taoyuan County on Dec. 2 to begin serving his time. Prison authorities are now considering how Wu should serve her sentence, given her health condition.
The Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday that it would abide by the law in handling Wu’s case, respecting the outcome of an assessment by doctors and follow humanitarian principles.
Following legal procedures, Wu, who is living in Kaohsiung, will be driven by ambulance to the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office before being sent to Pei Teh Hospital for an evaluation.
If the former first lady is found to be well enough to serve time, she will begin serving her sentence immediately after the evaluation. Otherwise, she will be sent back home to await a further decision by prosecutors.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS