A 53-year-old woman in Taipei jumped to her death on Saturday morning, leaving behind a note accusing President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of incompetence and of showing no concern for the sufferings of people.
Kuan Shu-ying (管淑櫻) climbed to the rooftop of the apartment building where she lived on Xinsheng N Road in Taipei at about 4:45am on Saturday. Police and firefighters soon arrived on the scene after receiving telephone calls from onlookers concerned to find Kuan sitting on the roof’s parapet.
Despite efforts to try to convince her to come down, Kuan refused, murmured criticisms of the government and jumped from the 11-story building.
Photo: Wu Yueh-hsiu, Taipei Times
Kuan left behind seven notes — six addressed to her family and one for Ma. In the latter, she called Ma an “incompetent president.”
In the note, Kuan said that, as a national leader, Ma frequently “does things that the people cannot understand” and that he is not fit to be president.
Kuan also accused the judiciary of being untrustworthy. Citing the recent scare over tainted oil, she said the way that the government handled it only made people feel more insecure.
“What’s the point of living in these circumstances?” Kuan wrote.
She went on to question whether Ma “would sleep well at night” as people suffer, and that a taxi driver who committed suicide to protest against government policies would not be the last person to do so.
Kuan was referring to the 58-year-old taxi driver who jumped from a bridge in Yangmingshan National Park last month, leaving a note criticizing the political infighting between Ma and Legislative Yuan Speaker Wan Jin-pyng (王金平).
“Tonight, I am going to give another life to you, which is mine,” Kuan declared at the end of the note.
Although firefighters had prepared an air cushion on the ground, they did not have time to inflate it sufficiently before Kuan jumped to her death.
Kuan’s friends and relatives told the media that she was disillusioned by Ma and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and often criticized the president and the party.
However, they did not expect Kuan to take such extreme action and were shocked by her death.
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