Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) fulfilled his familial obligation to pay his last respects to his late mother-in-law in Greater Tainan early yesterday amid massive police presence and a large crowd of eager supporters who gathered at the funeral home to greet him.
Escorted by prison officers and police, Chen arrived on a minibus at about 8:50am at the funeral home where the traditional mourning ceremony was to be held for Wu Wang Hsia (吳王霞), who died on Dec. 31 at the age of 85.
Greater Tainan remains an important support base for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), once chaired by Chen, who is currently serving a 17-and-a-half-year jail term for corruption.
Photo: Reuters
As soon as he got off the bus, the former president went down on his knees and crawled into the building as part of a traditional rite. He was not shackled or handcuffed.
In the elegy he delivered, a -tearful Chen recalled that he last met Wu in June 2009 when she attended a court hearing to testify on his behalf, and he referred to himself as “unfilial” for not seeing her before she passed away.
Chen also expressed his gratitude to his late mother-in-law for supporting his marriage to her daughter, former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍).
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
He said his wife inherited her sense of justice and “Taiwanese consciousness” from her mother, and had encouraged him to enter politics.
In an apparent attempt to burnish his wife’s reputation, which has been tainted by a conviction for graft, Chen said she was not a money-hungry person, as has been claimed.
He said that it was his wife who advised him to cut his own salary in half soon after he assumed the presidency in 2000.
Photo: AFP
The former president said he “definitely did not do the Taiwanese people wrong” or let his supporters down and expressed the hope that the judiciary would prove his innocence and see that justice is done in his various cases.
Chen’s address was followed by chants of “the judiciary is dead” and “A-bian is innocent” from a crowd of supporters that gathered at the funeral home to greet him.
More than 300 supporters waited outside the venue to show their support for Chen.
Photo: AFP
“I was very moved and very saddened by Chen’s talk,” said one of his supporters, Yang Chao, as she clutched a doll in the former president’s likeness.
Others chanted slogans against President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), including “Ma step down.”
Prior to his departure, Chen held a brief and emotional meeting with his mother, Chen Li Shen (陳李慎), as the two hugged and tears were shed.
At 11:02am, Chen was escorted back to the prison after spending two hours at the funeral home.
According to the former president’s office, about 600 police were deployed at the funeral home.
The office protested the heavy police presence, accusing the authorities of treating the former president as if he was a murderer and his supporters like rioters.
Chen Shui-bian and family members have been implicated in a complex network of cases that have led to them being accused of sending political donations and secret diplomatic funds abroad, laundering millions of US dollars and taking kickbacks on government contracts.
The former president has said that the cases are politically motivated and part of a vendetta waged against him in retaliation for his eight years in power, when he sought to push Taiwan toward a more formal independence from China.
In December 2010, Chen Shui-bian and his wife were each sentenced to a total of 17-and-a-half years in prison for taking bribes during his term in office.
Wu Shu-jen, who is in poor health and requires constant care, has had her incarceration postponed indefinitely after a prison hospital refused to admit her in February last year. She has been confined to a wheelchair since being run over by a truck in the 1980s.
ENDEAVOR MANTA: The ship is programmed to automatically return to its designated home port and would self-destruct if seized by another party The Endeavor Manta, Taiwan’s first military-specification uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) tailor-made to operate in the Taiwan Strait in a bid to bolster the nation’s asymmetric combat capabilities made its first appearance at Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor yesterday. Taking inspiration from Ukraine’s navy, which is using USVs to force Russia’s Black Sea fleet to take shelter within its own ports, CSBC Taiwan (台灣國際造船) established a research and development unit on USVs last year, CSBC chairman Huang Cheng-hung (黃正弘) said. With the exception of the satellite guidance system and the outboard motors — which were purchased from foreign companies that were not affiliated with Chinese-funded
PERMIT REVOKED: The influencer at a news conference said the National Immigration Agency was infringing on human rights and persecuting Chinese spouses Chinese influencer “Yaya in Taiwan” (亞亞在台灣) yesterday evening voluntarily left Taiwan, despite saying yesterday morning that she had “no intention” of leaving after her residence permit was revoked over her comments on Taiwan being “unified” with China by military force. The Ministry of the Interior yesterday had said that it could forcibly deport the influencer at midnight, but was considering taking a more flexible approach and beginning procedures this morning. The influencer, whose given name is Liu Zhenya (劉振亞), departed on a 8:45pm flight from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) to Fuzhou, China. Liu held a news conference at the airport at 7pm,
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
RSS