Did Chen end hunger strike?

He started taking truly watery rice soup on Wednesday. To be exact, it’s water that boils rice and is then scooped up without any grain of rice.

Arrested on charges of forgery, corruption and money laundering on November 12 and under detention since, Chen has been on a hunger strike for 15 days to showcase his innocence and protest the political persecution against him.

Chen was taken out of the Taipei detention center, where he is staying in a solitary cell, twice for hospital treatment after he had been found to suffer an irregular heartbeat.

The former president drank watery rice soup two times in the morning and at noon yesterday. “He ate? 500 cubic centimeters each time,” a detention warden said.

Doctors said Chen’s blood sugar is above the normal level. That means he is all right.

But nobody knows if Chen will drink the watery soup again today and days after that.

“To be or not to be,” a detention center source said, “is now the question our prisoner is asking himself.”

One more question left answered is whether that watery rice soup is considered “food.” It may or may not be.

A consummate defense lawyer, the ex-president should ask himself that question and answer it. If it is regarded as food, he has broken his fast to survive his detention until January 11 next year.

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