By Chris Wang / Staff Reporter
Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday urged President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to relaunch an investigation into the controversial 319 shooting case in 2004, which she said remained a key issue that divides the public.
“It has been eight years [since the incident] and the division between pan-green and pan-blue supporters is still there. Taiwanese society will only be at ease when the truth is revealed,” Lu told a press conference.
The 319 shooting incident refers to an attack on Lu and then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in Tainan on March 19, 2004, one day before the presidential election.
A bullet grazed Chen’s stomach and left a 13cm wound, while another bullet hit Lu in the knee. The authorities later identified the shooter as Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄), who was found dead 10 days after the incident.
Yesterday was the second time in the past two weeks that Lu has requested that Ma reopen the investigation.
Chen Shui-bian, who is serving a 17-and-a-half-year jail term for corruption, also wrote to Ma earlier this month and asked for a new investigation.
Lu said that since Ma had promised to continue an investigation into the 228 Massacre, he should do the same with the 319 shooting case.
Lu said the final report on the case had left many questions unanswered and that a report on the trajectory of the bullet by Henry Lee (李昌鈺), a US-based forensic scientist, was also “questionable.”
Lu said that points of suspicion in the case and the final report were “everywhere,” from the location, the motive and the identity of the shooter, to the shooter’s target, because she believed that the target might have been her, not Chen Shui-bian.
“Almost all criminal cases related to politics in Taiwan end up being a mystery, which is not right,” she said.