Former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) was taken home from a prison hospital yesterday after Taichung Prison declined to admit her because of her poor health.
The Kaohsiung Prosecutors’ Office ordered Wu’s son, Greater Kaohsiung Councilor Chen Chih-chung (陳致中), to take his wheelchair-bound mother home after a medical team at Pei Teh Hospital concluded that Wu was not well enough to serve her sentence.
The office also ruled that Wu could not change her residence in Greater Kaohsiung without permission and was prohibited from leaving the country.
Photo: CNA
The office said in a statement that it would send staff to visit Wu regularly to see if her health had improved enough to enable her to begin her sentence.
Wang Chun-li (王俊力), a senior prosecutor at the office, said that as there was no home detention system in Taiwan, Wu’s prison term remains unchanged.
“Wu’s incarceration has only been postponed indefinitely,” Wang said, adding that her appearance at the office and the prison hospital yesterday would not be deducted from her sentence.
Wang said Wu would be summoned to start serving her full 17-and-a-half-year jail term whenever the prosecutors’ office decides she is well enough to stay behind bars.
Wu was sent to the Taichung Prison-run Pei Teh Hospital earlier in the day to assess her health.
Wu, who has been paralyzed from the waist down since she was run over by a truck 27 years ago, was greeted by hundreds of supporters as she arrived at the hospital amid tight security.
Many shouted: “A-Chen is innocent” — referring to her by her nickname, and briefly scuffled with police as they tried to get past barricades to enter the hospital.
A team composed of 14 physicians from China Medical University in Taichung assessed the state of Wu’s health in 10 categories as part of a series of examinations that lasted from 10am to 2pm.
Yang Mei-tu (楊美都), deputy superintendent of the university, who took part in the assessment, said Wu suffers from low blood pressure, an autonomic nervous system disorder and heart disease.
“The medical team concluded that Wu’s chances of survival are unpredictable, that she cannot take care of herself on a day-to-day basis and that it is difficult to provide care for her,” Yang said.
Based on the team’s assessment, the Taichung Prison said it decided not to admit Wu, in accordance with Article 11 of the Prison Act (監獄行刑法).
The decision to suspend her sentence triggered an angry response from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅), who was among the first to allege corruption against the Chen family.
“There are other people with chronic serious illnesses who are currently serving their prison terms, and this is very unfair to them. Many people are angry and this could trigger a political storm,” Chiu said.
Wu and her husband, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), were each sentenced to a total of 19 years in jail by the Supreme Court in November last year for taking bribes when Chen Shui-bian was president.
However, the Taiwan High Court ruled in December that Wu and Chen Shui-bian should each serve 17-and-a-half years.
The former president, who had been held at a detention center since late 2008, was transferred to Taipei Prison in Taoyuan County on Dec. 2 to begin serving his sentence.
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
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
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
RSS