Lawyers for the Buddhist Compassionate Relief Tzu Chi Foundation (慈濟功德會) yesterday said that the organization's founder Master Cheng Yen (證嚴法師) had decided not to appeal a civil lawsuit in the "pool of blood" defamation case.
Foundation spokesman Ho Jih-sheng (何日生) said that throughout the two-year lawsuit Cheng Yen had never intended to win anything but had tried to communicate with the complainants in the hope of settling out of court.
According to testimony given to the court in the original case, Cheng Yen visited a private clinic in Hualien 37 years ago and saw a pool of blood on the ground. She was told the blood was from an Aboriginal woman named Chen Chiou-en (陳秋吟), who had suffered a miscarriage. Chen could not pay an advance payment of NT$8,000 to get treatment and died on the way home.
Cheng Yen has since presented this story many times as her inspiration to establish a hospital that would never reject any patient. But she never mentioned the name of the doctor or clinic involved.
However, the family of Dr. Chuang Ju-kuei (莊汝貴), the doctor who sent his patient home for insufficient funds, sued Cheng Yen after her follower Lee Man-mei (李滿妹) identified the doctor as the owner of the clinic.
Last month Cheng Yen lost a civil lawsuit and was ordered to pay NT$1.01 million to Chuang.
Earlier this month, an Aboriginal man Chen Wen-chien (陳文謙), who had claimed to be one of the young Aboriginal men who had carried the woman to the clinic 37 years ago, confirmed Cheng Yen's story in a press conference.
Questioning the outcome of the civil case, Ho said that Tzu Chi lawyers had never questioned Chuang's character or medical ethics in public during the lawsuit, yet judges concluded that Chuang had made no mistakes when practicing medicine, thereby finding Cheng Yen at fault in the civil lawsuit.
"The wound won't heal if we continue to appeal," Cheng Yen said on Tuesday night.
Despite the controversial suit coming to an end, Master Shih Chao-hui (釋昭慧) of Buddhist Hongshi Institute said she would work with religious and human-rights groups to erect a monument in Hsinshe (新社) village of Hualien, the deceased woman's hometown, to commemorate "that tragedy" and express her sincere apologies to the indigenous people. Shih said this case underlines the unfair treatment indigenous people have to suffer.
In response to Cheng Yen's decision not to appeal, the Chuang family's lawyer Lu Sheng-hsien (呂勝賢) said yesterday that the family accepted the decision but still believed that the "pool of blood" story was purely fictional.
"Lee told Cheng Yen that the blood had been left by Chen Chiou-en and said publicly that she knew this because she went to Dr. Chuang's clinic a lot. But when she testified in court, she told the judge that she had only gone to the clinic once," Lu said.
When the judge showed Lee a picture of Chen Chiou-en and asked her to identify her, Lee replied that she was sure the woman in the picture was indeed Chen, Lu said.
"The judge was not convinced by Lee's testimony because Lee's reaction was strange. How could she identify someone she had met only once 37 years ago so firmly?" Lu asked.
Lu also quoted the ruling of the Hualien District Court that said that Chen Wen-chien's testimony was full of contradictions.
"All the question marks raised by Lee and Chen Wen-chien's testimonies indicate that the story told by Cheng Yen of the so-called `pool of blood' was entirely fictional," Lu said.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS