Kaohsiung City Council
No.192, Zhongzheng 4th Rd.,
Qianjin District,
Kaohsiung City 801,
Taiwan (R.O.C.)
18 October 2010
Dear Council Members:
I was quite impressed by the Kaohsiung City Council's formal dedication to human rights in Mainland China, and your principled determination that "the city government and private organizations not be allowed to invite to the city Chinese officials who have been accused of violating human rights" (The Taipei Times October 18, 2010, p. 1).
I'm curious, however, if the Kaohsiung City Council would apply its resolution to Taiwanese officials who violate human rights as well. In 1999 I was illegally dismissed from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan. Although I won a Ministry of Education appeal ruling in January, 2001, the university's president, Kao Chiang, refused to enforce that ruling for nearly two and a half years, despite eight warning letters from the Ministry of Education (attached).
The current university president, Lai Ming-Chiao, has ignored my request for an official apology for these human rights violations. The president-elect, Hwung-Hweng Hwung, has also not responded.
According to the Taipei Times article, "Kaohsiung City is a modern metropolis that protects human rights," and "both the city and private organizations should therefore highlight the universality of human rights."
But the "universality of human rights" begins at home, at the local level. Yet NCKU officials argued in court, apparently unconcerned about what Thomas Jefferson called "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind," that "foreign" teachers were not protected by Taiwan's Teacher's Law. That was a violation of my human rights. It was also an insult to all Americans who defend the rights of Taiwanese both here and in our country.
My illegal dismissal, which involved the circulation of a secret letter (the student who wrote that letter is currently employed as a teacher at NCKU), was also a violation of my human rights. The university's refusal to enforce a legal Ministry ruling was a violation of my human rights too.
Finally, even after the university held (presumably bogus) appeal hearings, and then participated at Ministry appeal hearings in Taipei, it argued, after the Ministry's ruling favored me, that foreign teachers had no right to appeal in the first place! This is not merely a violation of my human rights, it's outright duplicity that would discredit a bushiban. Yet NCKU is a high-ranked university.
Officials in Mainland China did not do this to me. Officials (and NCKU faculty) in Taiwan did this to me. Some of them may teach at, or have academic exchanges with, universities in Kaohsiung.
Nor is this a matter of one or two officials. Numerous university committees at the department, college, and university levels, repeatedly passed my illegal dismissal, even after the Ministry ruling! If only a small number had taken a stand on behalf of human rights that dismissal would never have passed in the first place.
That means a significant number of educated, or at least accredited, Taiwanese, many with American degrees, are either ignorant of, or indifferent to, human rights in Taiwan. Yet these same individuals were protected by human rights when matriculated or teaching in the US, and they presumably rely on American laws and human rights principles to protect their children there.
One wonders how the Kaohsiung City Council would respond if an American university acted with similar duplicity against a Taiwanese professor or student; if a student from Kaohsiung passed his oral exams for an advanced degree at an American university and then, after passing, was told he had to retake his orals because Taiwanese are not protected by the same laws and rights that protect American students.
The difference is most US news media would expose that case in days and the student would promptly obtain pro bono human rights assistance. The university would be quickly discredited, apologize, award the student his degree, and settle with appropriate damages.
In Taiwan, despite numerous human rights groups here, I had to fight this case alone, with some valiant members of NCKU's Teacher's Union assisting me. Apparently, NCKU teachers exchanging ideas in the university coffee shop is more newsworthy than their ignoring human rights at their university, even as they "voice concern" over human rights violations in Mainland China. If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black I don't know what is.
True, human rights in Mainland China are life and death issues. But that's the point. We must make sure they don't become life and death issues here. It's easier to raise our voices than to raise our dead. Let's exercise our freedoms before we lose them. It's better to fight for human rights when you're free than to fight for freedom when you're not. Amnesty International understands that.
Yet not a single NCKU official involved in this case has been punished. Presumably that will help deter similar violations in the future. Presumably that will help establish a tradition of human rights here.
The university has still not acknowledged its human rights violations, a policy that will probably continue when the new president assumes office in February, 2011, since he has already started a pattern of not responding to my emails about the issue. This does not bode well for human rights here.
In Mainland China, with no human rights guarantees, a citizen stood up to a tank. In Taiwan, protected by human rights laws, principles, and charters, as well as the support of the international community, no one will challenge a university lawyer or president based on those statutes and principles, not to mention common sense and common decency.
If a person wins an appeal surely that appeal must be enforced. If an American professor teaches here surely he is protected by the same rights that protect your citizens, just as you're protected in America. Even if you don't believe in human rights, surely you believe in reciprocity.
I am sure all of you are good people. But, as Edmund Burke famously said, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
Sincerely,
Richard de Canio
formerly Associate Professor
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
