Mon, Mar 22, 2004 page1

• Chen treatment photos released

  SCOTCHING RUMORS After suggestions by political opponents that the president's shooting was a stunt, the presidential office released more pictures and records

  • By Lin Chieh-yu / STAFF REPORTER
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  The Presidential Office yesterday publicized evidence relating to the attempted assassination of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) Friday, on the eve of the presidential election, urging people not to believe rumors or indulge in empty speculation but wait for the investigative machinery of the legal system to produce results. \nExplaining why photos of the president being treated for his gunshot wound in hospital were not made available on the day of the shooting, Presidential Office Spokesman James Huang (黃志芳) said: "President Chen's first priority after the incident was to ensure national security and social stability, and the reason why these bloody photos were not publicized was because the government did not want to arouse supporters' irrational reactions." \n"President Chen indicated that the presidential election should not be affected by the gunshot incident," Huang said. "If we did want to affect the election, we could have released the photos Friday night, which would absolutely have gained a lot of sympathy and affected voters' intentions. \n"Therefore, the government appeals to the public to return to their normal lives and just allow the legal system to go ahead," Huang said. \nThe shooting occurred Friday afternoon, while Chen and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) stood side by side on a jeep leading a motorcade through Tainan City. \nThe pair were immediately escorted to the Chi Mei Medical Center in Tainan County. According to medical staff at the hospital the injuries were not life-threatening and the two remained conscious throughout their treatment. \nThe pan-blue camp, has however, questioned whether in fact the assassination attempt wasn't a stunt organized to get sympathy for Chen prior to the voting. \nThe pan-blues claim that voting should not have gone ahead on Saturday and that the election could have been postponed until the facts behind the assassination attempt could be clearly ascertained. \nIndependent lawmaker Sisy Chen (陳文茜), a DPP renegade working as an advisor to the pan-blue presidential candidate Lien Chan (連戰), held a press conference at the KMT's campaign headquarter at midnight Friday, saying that the hospital had faked the medical records of the president and Lu. \nShe suggested that the entire incident was a falsified event to try to sway voters. She claimed to have information from "an anonymous nurse" claiming "the national security system was involved in the conspiracy." \nThe DPP campaign's executive manager Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) condemned the allegations in the strongest terms, saying that such a attitude was "blindly unconscionable." \nTo further allay opposition parties' doubts about the incident, the Presidential Office yesterday publicized eight photos, showing the process of treatment of the president and the vice president. \nThe photos show President Chen being sutured on a hospital bed and Lu lying on a hospital bed with a wounded knee. \n"This is the first time I have ever shown photos of my patients in a 20-year career, Hsiao Tzu-yu (蕭自裕), doctor of the department of otolaryngology at the National Taiwan University Hospital (台大醫院) said. \nHsiao said that he felt displaying the photos was a serious violation of doctor patient confidentiality and medical ethics. \nHuang stressed that some people had spread rumors about the shooting to slander the head of the state, saying that the president was actually not injured and had even demanded to examine the president's stomach. \n"We have contacted with the Chi Mei Hospital to try to find out whether there was a nurse who accused the government for manipulating the incident. The chief of the hospital told us that in fact there was a nurse who had made a call to Sisy Chen," Huang said. \n"Looking at the photos, if the bullet was fired from a different angle and had hit the president one inch deeper, the president could have died," Huang said, adding that it was preposterous to think that the president's life could have been willfully endangered in such a manner. \nThe pan-blue camp has requested that all records of Chen and Lu's visit to Chi Mei be put aside for investigation. \nMeanwhile, Tainan Chief Prosecutor Wang Jung-san (王榮森) yesterday said that there had been no further progress in the investigation of the assassination attempt due to the difficulties of obtaining ballistics evidence from the homemade bullets which were used for the shooting. \n"Due to the poor quality of the bullets, we cannot make sure whether they were fired from the same pistol," said Wang. "Also, for the same reason, we still have difficulties to figure out the exact location where the gunman opened fire, whether he shot the president and vice president in the crowd or from a higher position in one of the buildings along the road." \nWang made his remarks during a press conference yesterday afternoon. He said that the two homemade bullets the police discovered now became the biggest obstacles for them to identify and locate the suspect since it is difficult to get useful evidence from the bullets. \n"We cannot even figure out what kind of pistol it was," he said. \nHowever, Wang said that investigators are now pretty sure that the shooting took place between No. 8 and No. 36 on Jinhua Rd. Sec. 3. He explained it with two pictures in his hand. \n"The first picture was taken when the president's vehicle was traveling by No. 8. There was no bullet hole on the vehicle's windshield," said Wang. \n"However, the hole appears on this one, when the vehicle was passing by No. 36," he said.

  

  President Chen Shui-bian speaks on a mobile phone as he receives medical treatment on his gunshot wound in this photo released by the Presidential Office yesterday to refute allegations that the shooting was a campaign stunt.

  PHOTO COURTESY OF PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE

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