Taiwanese authorities have decided to send the ailing wife of disgraced former president Chen Shui-bian to prison, risking a possible political crisis if she dies in jail.
The Supreme Court sentenced Wu Shu-chen last month along with Chen to 19 years in prison for corruption. Chen began serving his prison sentence on Thursday, but the judicial authorities had a tough time deciding what to do with Wu.
Paralysed from the waist down in a 1985 car accident that she and Chen insist was politically motivated, Wu needs nursing care 24 hours a day.
Weighing less than 30 kilograms, the wheelchair-bound Wu has to take more than 10 kinds of medicine for various illnesses, including diabetes and extremely low blood pressure. She needs a massage of an hour and a half in order to pass faeces.
In the absence of round-the-clock care for Wu, her supporters said, sending her to prison would almost guarantee she would die while serving her term. But critics said allowing her to remain free would draw the criticism that the judicial authorities were failing to uphold justice.
After more than three hours of discussion of what to do with Wu, the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office decided yesterday to send Wu to the Pei Teh special prison for seriously sick female inmates, in Taichung in central Taiwan.
'After assessing all the conditions and suitable prisons for female inmates, we believe Pei Teh Prison Hospital in Taichung would be the most appropriate one, as it could offer her the medical care she needs,' Lin Pang-liang, a spokesman for the prosecutors' office, said.