Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The Madness of Ma: Slow-Motion State Violence in Taiwan and the Murder of Chen Shui-bian

Jack Healey

The Human Rights Action Center has been involved for seven months in a investigation into the incarceration conditions and medical care of former Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian. We sent a longtime Asia researcher, Harreld Dinkins, and Hans Wahl, a researcher with considerable expertise on prison standards and the imperatives for prisoner medical care to Taiwan last year. What we discovered was that, while the President's material conditions of incarceration were close enough to international standards that an argument might be dismissed, that his medical care had been systematically denied or inadequate such that there were conditions that emerged that were previously non-existent and conditions that were made considerably worse and permanent.

I need medical care: Chen

Taipei Times

Dismissing the Ministry of Justice’s statement that former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will have an exclusive 243 ping (803m2) area in Taichung Prison’s Pei Teh Hospital, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday quoted Chen as saying that what he really needs is medical care.

“It means nothing even if the entire Taichung Prison was at my disposal, because what I desperately need is medical care,” Su quoted Chen as saying after visiting the former president.

Academics mull legality of vote

Taipei Times

Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) may have violated the Referendum Act (公民投票法) through their collaboration in launching a national referendum proposal on the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮), a group of academics and lawmakers said yesterday.

Article 13 of the Referendum Act prohibits the nation’s administrative bodies from carrying out referendums or commissioning other organizations to carry out referendums, lawyer Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) told a press conference organized by the Taiwan Association of University Professors.

US rights report points to Taiwan corruption, abuse

Taipei Times

The principal human rights problems reported in Taiwan last year were judicial corruption and violence against women and children, the US State Department’s annual report on human rights showed on Friday.

The report’s 10-page analysis of the state of human rights in Taiwan touched on the imprisonment of ailing former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), but did not reach any conclusions about his continued incarceration.

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