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Brazilian boy may be allowed to stay 20 additional days

The uncle of the Taiwanese-Brazilian boy at the center of an international custody battle expressed relief yesterday upon learning that Kaohsiung District Court had issued a "supplementary" notice to him on Thursday to turn the boy over to his Brazilian grandmother.

Wu Huo-yen (吳火眼) and his lawyer interpreted the new notice as extending by 20 days the deadline for turning the nine-year-old boy over to his Brazilian grandmother, thus allowing the uncle to keep the boy through the Lunar New Year holidays.

The boy, Iruan Wu Ergui, whose Chinese name is Wu Yi-hua (吳憶樺), is a second-grader at an elementary school in Chiehting, Kaohsiung County. The school is closed for the winter break, and Iruan was seen playing with his uncle's two sons and neighbors around his family's house yesterday.

Kaohsiung District Court served a notice to the boy's uncle on Dec. 27 at his Chiehting address asking him to turn the boy over within 20 days to Paulo Pinto, the director of the Brazil Business Center in Taiwan. Pinto is serving as proxy for the boy's Brazilian grandmother, Rosa Leocadia Silva Ergui.

The Thursday deadline passed without Wu handing the boy over as ordered in the notice.

Accompanied by Chinese Nationalist Party Legislator Lin Yi-shih (林益世), Wu, Iruan and more than 30 of Wu's family members held a press conference Friday at which they fell to their knees to appeal to the public for support and to the grandmother to respect the boy's apparent wish to stay in Taiwan.

A support group called for donations of NT$10 per person to help Wu pay fines and to help him support the boy.

According to regulations, if Wu refuses to comply with the court order, he can be fined between NT$30,000 and NT$300,000 (US$890 and US$8,900). If he continues to defy the court's ruling, the court will order the police to implement a transfer of custody.

Iruan was born out of wedlock in Brazil in July 1995 to a Brazilian mother and a Taiwan-ese father. His mother died six years ago, and he was brought to Taiwan in March 2001 by his father, who died a couple of weeks later. Since then, the boy has been living with his uncle in Kaohsiung.

His grandmother, who became the boy's legal guardian upon his mother's death, decided to take legal action to regain custody of her grandson after his uncle refused to let her take him back to Brazil in 2001.

The grandmother said earlier that she was elated to learn about the Kaohsiung Supreme Court's ruling Nov. 13 that the boy should be returned to her. However, she said she would not come to Taiwan because she wanted to avoid the media spotlight, which she felt would be bad for the boy.
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