Letter to Green Island Human Rights Memorial Staff

Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park Staff

23 December 2011

Memorializing human rights abuses in the past is commendable but is no substitute for enforcing human rights in the present.

In 1999, I was illegally dismissed from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature (FLLD) at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan, Taiwan. The appeal process was a ruse to delay the case, against appellate rights, since the university later claimed I had no right to appeal, though it held numerous appeal hearings and participated at one at the Ministry of Education in Taipei. Thus the university not only defied human rights principles but even principles of fair play that schoolchildren are taught at a young age.

After I won an appeal in a Ministry of Education (MOE) ruling dated 8 January 2001, university president, Kao Chiang, defied it for nearly two and a half years. Yet he was approved by the MOE for another three-year term.

Emboldened, subsequent NCKU presidents have refused to remedy, or apologize for, human rights violations. Instead, in March and May of this year (2011), on NCKU's official web page (http://news-en.secr.ncku.edu.tw/files/13-1083-78482-1.php), current president Hwung-Hweng Hwung whitewashed my illegal dismissal as a "discontinued employment" (http://rdca45b.blogspot.com/ ).

Mr. Hwung asserts "Legal procedures were carefully observed." Yet the MOE warned that NCKU "seriously influenced the appellant's rights" (April 6, 2001), made "previous improper procedures" (June 14, 2001), and cautioned NCKU officials "not to repeatedly and deviously interpret the law" (August 17, 2001) (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCDpwd8lE2WN5jzfNAvBIP4GTM_j6jC3yuA4Gq2IbLlxGTsQ_9s6MDqEK596XXZLrnI7cADZW_L5Fa-TC5LVbKzkMRjdIsrkpXSmu-6_WTYyShiY91YQ0_pMc860OoEu3GSD8WntXOLdM/s1600/moeLetters10-726356.JPG). Taiwan's Higher Court similarly ruled the dismissal "was not lawful" (16 January 2007). Tainan's District Court ruled NCKU "violated the law" and the dismissal was "definitely full of wrongdoings" (7 April 2007).

So why doesn't National Cheng Kung University, presumably the fourth-ranked in Taiwan, and with numerous academic exchanges with US universities, admit wrongdoing, hold its officials accountable, and insure compensation instead of whitewashing the illegal dismissal as "discontinued employment"?

I should add that on that same page (http://news-en.secr.ncku.edu.tw/files/13-1083-78482-1.php) current Secretariat, Chin-Cheng Chen, goes beyond whitewashing the university's illegal actions and actually inculpates me in the university's illegal dismissal, as if legal rulings, by the Ministry of Education as well as Taiwan's courts (attached), have no material effect.

Are there laws in Taiwan, or sanctions by the Ministry of Education, that prevent this kind of equivocal, and even defamatory, language by university officials to protect the rights of "foreign" faculty and insure their reputation and dignity in Taiwan? US laws protect Taiwan faculty and students; why doesn't Taiwan's government honor universal principles of human rights in the same way?

Richard de Canio
formerly, Associate Professor
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan