More than 150 supporters gathered outside the Taipei County Hospital in Banciao to demand the release of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who was in stable condition yesterday but still refusing to eat for the seventh day since being detained last Wednesday.
The hospital said it had no plans to force feed him and was evaluating when to send Chen back to the Taipei Detention Center in Tucheng (土城), Taipei County.
Chen is suspected of money laundering, taking bribes, forgery and embezzling NT$15 million (US$450,000) during his two terms in office. He has been held incommunicado without charge.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
The former president has accused the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration of “political persecution” and of waging a “political vendetta” against him to curry favor with China.
Tainan County Councilor Chen Chao-lai (陳朝來) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) announced on Monday that he would mobilize some 400 supporters from Chen Shui-bian's hometown in Tainan, but only 150 showed up yesterday.
The supporters held placards and chanted slogans, “A-bian, jiayou,” referring to the former president by his nickname, and demanded his release. They were later dispersed by the police on the grounds that it was an illegal gathering.
Chen Shui-bian remained in stable condition yesterday after being intravenously fed at the hospital.
Yang Chang-bin (楊長彬), the hospital's deputy director, said that while Chen still refused to eat, his condition had improved.
The former president was conscious, his blood acidity has dropped and his X-ray scans were clear, Yang said.
Chen weighed 65.5kg with a heartbeat rate of 86 per minute, Yang said, adding however that Chen still suffered from minor bloating and that doctors found ketone reaction in Chen's urine.
Doctors will continue to treat him with nutritional supplements and other measures to prevent his health from deteriorating, Yang said.
Saying that Chen is still too weak to be released, Yang said the hospital would evaluate his condition and after consulting with the detention center, would decide how long Chen should remain hospitalized.
Asked when the Special Investigation Panel (SIP) will question Chen, SIP spokesman Chen Yun-nan (陳雲南) said the former president's health outweighed everything and they would not consider questioning him until he was fit to do so.
Later last night, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) visited Chen Shui-bian at the hospital.
Meanwhile, Chen Shui-bian's brother, Chen Wen-shou (陳文狩), told reporters camped outside the family's house in Kuantian Township (官田) in Tainan County that his mother is over 80 years old and her health condition is unstable.
Her health has deteriorated since his brother was incarcerated, he said, adding that his mother made a trip to a hospital in Kaohsiung, where she is now under the care of his elder sister.
The former president's mother is suspected of allowing the former first family to use her name as a dummy account for money laundering. The SIP intended to question her on Monday, but she asked for a leave of absence because of poor health.
Chen Wen-shou said that his mother had not yet received further notice from the SIP, but she would answer the subpoena as soon as her health condition improved.
In other developments, Chiayi Count Commissioner Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) of the DPP, who was sent to hospital on Monday night for treatment after staging a hunger strike since Nov. 11, still refused to eat yesterday.
Chen Ming-wen, who allegedly divulged the reserve price of a tender for a sewage processing plant in the county, was detained and held incommunicado since Oct. 28.
Chiayi Chief Prosecutor Hung Kwang-hsuan said yesterday that his fellow prosecutors would consider the request made by Chen Ming-wen's wife, Liao Su-hui (廖素惠), and his lawyer Liu Jung-yi (劉炯意) to allow him to have visitors.
Liao said she would persuade her husband in person to give up the hunger strike if prosecutors allowed her husband to receive visitors.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JIMMY CHUANG
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching