The Presidential Office will display publicly on Aug. 5 the prison diary kept by President Chen Shui-bian (
The diary is to form part of an exhibition of presidential documents and other items throughout the history of the ROC.
"This exhibition displays important documents, pictures, and manuscripts relating to ROC presidencies past and present, and President Chen's diary is just a small part of it. However, it is truly a showcase of the evolution of Taiwan's democratization," said Kuo Yao-chi (
In 1984, Chen was director of the tang wai (
Feng filed a charge of libel against the magazine. Chen, as the magazine's director, was convicted and sentenced to eight months in prison in 1985. While his appeal against the conviction was pending, Chen left his post as a Taipei city councilor and returned to his home county of Tainan to run for county commissioner.
Chen lost the election by just a handful of votes, but his supporters suspected vote-rigging on the part of election authorities. Shortly after the election, Chen's wife, Wu Shu-chen (吳淑珍) was crippled when a three-wheeled truck was driven over her legs. Members of the opposition movement believed the incident to be a politically motivated attempt to kill her husband, in which Wu became the accidental victim.
"He lost the election, I was crippled, and he still had time to serve in prison. They may be said to be the darkest days in A-bian's life," Wu has often said of that period.
An extract from the entry in Chen's diary for June 9 1986 reads: "Sometime between 19:00 and 20:00 my seventh and last farewell rally took place on the athletic grounds at Taipei's Yang-ming Junior High School. Sometime after 22:00 A-chen (
"The crowd did not start to disperse until 4am. That was the first and the longest night of Taiwan's democracy. We are moving away from darkness and running toward the light."
On a more intimate note, two days later on June 11 1986, Chen wrote of his crippled wife, "I lost freedom because of the fight for freedom, and she lost happiness because of her pursuit of democracy. We are both suffering but we cannot be together to comfort each other and cheer each other up. I can only pray that a miracle will happen and she will recover in eight months' time."
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