A-Bian. You need to carry on.
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Taiwanese Leaders Survive Shooting Incident Ahead of Vote
By KEITH BRADSHER and JOSEPH KAHN
Published: March 19, 2004/ New York Times
AINAN, Taiwan, Saturday, March 20 — The president and vice president of Taiwan were shot in this southern Taiwan city Friday afternoon on the eve of bitterly contested national elections, but neither suffered life-threatening injuries and the central election commission said that the vote would proceed as scheduled today.
President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu were standing next to each other in an open-roofed red Jeep being driving slowly through streets crowded with supporters in Tainan, the president's hometown, when the president was struck in the stomach by a bullet, the police and government spokesmen said.
Supporters lining the route of the motorcade were discharging large numbers of firecrackers, and the president initially thought he had been hit by one of them, only to find his stomach becoming wet with blood, Chiou I-Jen, the secretary general of the presidential office, said at a news briefing in Taipei. The president and vice president were taken to the Chi Mei Medical Center in Tainan, where they were treated and released. They returned Friday night.
The precise circumstances of the shooting, which many observers surmised could affect voting in the tight race, remained unclear through Friday night. There was even speculation that the shootings might have been staged in an effort to increase support for Mr. Chen.
A bullet was found lodged between the skin of the president's stomach and his undershirt, having apparently torn a wound four inches long, an inch wide and an inch deep, Dr. Steve Chan, the medical center's president, said in a televised briefing.
Ms. Lu's injury was less clear. Mr. Chiou said that the vice president had felt a sharp pain in her right knee at the same time the president was hit, but Mr. Chiou and other presidential officials declined to specify whether she had been struck by a bullet. Dr. Chan said she had a very shallow flesh wound on her knee.
Defense Minister Tang Yian-min said that the Taiwanese military had been placed on alert but that there had been no hint of any unusual activity across the Taiwan Strait in mainland China.
There was no immediate reaction from officials in Beijing.
President Chen's Democratic Progressive Party and Lien Chan, the presidential candidate of the opposition Nationalist Party, each appealed for calm, canceled large campaign rallies scheduled for this evening and even urged their supporters not to gather in public places.
Local and national police officials gathered in Tainan to investigate the matter said they had no suspects in the case. They said the president's bodyguards and witnesses on the scene had all said they did not hear shots fired and did not spot anyone with a gun. They appealed for spectators to come forward with any information that might prove useful in the investigation.
Several investigators said that supporters of Mr. Chen packed the parade route through the center of the city lighting firecrackers, raising the possibility that the sound of the gun used in the shooting would go undetected.
Ho Yuo-yi, chief of the Criminal Investigations Bureau of the National Police Agency, who spoke to reporters in Tainan late Friday night, presented a diagram of the motorcade route that showed that the site where the president reported feeling a pain in his stomach just over a half-mile from the site where the police subsequently found spent cartridge shells.
Mr. Ho said that the police had initially determined that two different types of bullets were fired, one made of lead and another of copper, and that the trajectories of the bullets — one coming from the left side of the open vehicle and the other through the right side of the front windshield — suggested the possibility that there were two gunmen.
He and other police officials said the bullets were of a type fired by a handgun and that the gun or guns involved appeared to be of low quality, possibly homemade. But they stressed that any conclusions were premature.
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