The head of the Taipei Prison yesterday said there was no need for former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to receive medical treatment outside the prison, even though he has recently complained about feeling unwell.
Fang Tze-chieh (方子傑) was responding to a call by Chen Chih-chung (陳致中), the son of the former president, for authorities to allow his father to leave jail to receive check-ups or treatment.
Chen Chih-chung, who visited his father at the prison earlier in the day, said doctors from the Taipei-based Shin Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital, who take care of the former president, said he had developed signs of coronary artery disease or even heart failure and should be treated outside prison.
PHOTO: YU JUI-JEN, TAIPEI TIMES
“Can the prison authorities take full responsibility should there be any undesired and unpredicted development [in my father] now that doctors have made the suggestion?” asked Chen Chih-chung, who is an elected member of the Greater Kaohsiung Council.
Fang told reporters that the former president had suffered from a headache for a few days because he took the wrong medicine, a problem that was resolved when doctors prescribed new medicine for him.
He said Chen Shui-bian’s physical condition did not merit the need for out-of-prison treatment.
“When there is such a need, we will do that,” Fang said.
On Nov. 11, the Supreme Court sentenced Chen to 11 years in prison for taking bribes in a land deal during his time in office and also gave him an eight-year sentence in another bribery case.
The former president maintains that his incarceration is the result of a political vendetta by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for his pro-independence views.
The rulings were the first final convictions in a string of corruption cases implicating Chen and his wife, Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍).
The former president is serving a combined jail term of 17-and-a-half years at Taipei Prison in Kueishan, Taoyuan County.
Additional reporting by Staff Writer
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS