Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will sue Minister of National Defense Chen Chao-min (陳肇敏) after he implied that the assassination attempt on the eve of the 2004 presidential election was staged, a former lawmaker said yesterday.
“I was entrusted by former president Chen and will file the lawsuit with the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Monday at the earliest opportunity,” former Democratic Progressive Party legislator Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇), who is also an attorney, said yesterday.
Wounds
During his first briefing to the legislature’s Diplomacy and National Defense Committee on Monday, Chen Chao-min said that the wounds on former president Chen Shui-bian’s stomach were not caused by the shooting on Chinhua Street, Tainan City.
Chen Shui-bian was quoted by Hsu as saying that he had decided to take legal action because what the new defense minister had said was “untrue” and had “damaged his reputation.”
Hsu said Chen Shui-bian’s office talked to him about the matter on Thursday.
Chen Chao-min said on Monday that his remarks were based on the investigation conducted by the 319 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee, of which he was a member.
Pan-blue lawmakers set up the committee in 2004 by pushing a statute through the legislature that they dominated to look into the incident, while the pan-green camp boycotted the committee.
The shooting happened when Chen Shui-bian and former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) were campaigning in a jeep in Tainan City. The incident left both Chen Shui-bian and Lu slightly injured.
Narrow win
The pan-blue camp believes that the shooting was the main reason behind Chen and Lu’s narrow victory in the election because it generated sympathy votes.
The official investigation was closed in August 2005 with the report saying that Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄), who was found dead 10 days after the incident, was the gunman.
Chu Chao-liang (朱朝亮), a former head of Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, said in a Central News Agency report yesterday that he and other prosecutors who participated in the official investigation would appear in the court as prosecution witnesses.
Chu said they could give evidence to prove that the shooting took place on Chinhua Street.
‘Unfit’
Meanwhile, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus yesterday said that Chen Chao-min was “unfit” to be a minister following his comments.
“Chen Shui-bian should file a suit against Chen Chao-min because what the minister said was totally untrue,” DPP legislative caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said. “If a national defense minister does not know there is a military airport in Taoyuan, how can one expect him to remember anything of the 319 case?”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JIMMY CHUANG
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
STANDING TOGETHER: Amid China’s increasingly aggressive activities, nations must join forces in detecting and dealing with incursions, a Taiwanese official said Two senior Philippine officials and one former official yesterday attended the Taiwan International Ocean Forum in Taipei, the first high-level visit since the Philippines in April lifted a ban on such travel to Taiwan. The Ocean Affairs Council hosted the two-day event at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center. Philippine Navy spokesman Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, Coast Guard spokesman Grand Commodore Jay Tarriela and former Philippine Presidential Communications Office assistant secretary Michel del Rosario participated in the forum. More than 100 officials, experts and entrepreneurs from 15 nations participated in the forum, which included discussions on countering China’s hybrid warfare
MORE DEMOCRACY: The only solution to Taiwan’s current democratic issues involves more democracy, including Constitutional Court rulings and citizens exercising their civil rights , Lai said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is not the “motherland” of the Republic of China (ROC) and has never owned Taiwan, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. The speech was the third in a series of 10 that Lai is scheduled to deliver across Taiwan. Taiwan is facing external threats from China, Lai said at a Lions Clubs International banquet in Hsinchu. For example, on June 21 the army detected 12 Chinese aircraft, eight of which entered Taiwanese waters, as well as six Chinese warships that remained in the waters around Taiwan, he said. Beyond military and political intimidation, Taiwan
RSS