Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Hospitalized former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has suffered a nervous breakdown and should be removed from his current environment, which lacks the support mechanisms that patients with mental illnesses need to recover, a psychiatrist on Chen’s medical team said yesterday.

“The most ideal environment for Chen to make a full recovery would be his home, not the Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH), where he is currently staying to receive treatment … and definitely not Taipei Prison,” Mackay Memorial Hospital psychiatrist Chen Chiao-chi (陳喬琪) told the Taipei Times.

Taiwan Political Prisoner Report, January 14, 2013. Chen Tan-sun, also known as Mark Chen, agreed to talk about Chen Shui-bian’s case. We met in the cafeteria of the legislative office building where Mark Chen’s office is located.

Mark Chen was blunt about what has happened and who is responsible: “China is the major factor behind what Ma is doing. Ma obviously listens to China and so China, under Hu Jintao, was putting the line, even directions, to Ma Ying-jeou. Because, if you study the Chinese history, the so-called Kuomintang, which is Ma Ying-jeou’s party, and the Communist Party, they were brothers way back in China.”