±H¥ó¤é´Á: MON, 22 MAR 2004 12:06:52
¥D¡@¡@¦®: Regarding human rights abuses at National Cheng
Kung University
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Kao Chiang,
President
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
22 March 2004
Dear President Kao,
National Cheng Kung University in Tainan has a history of
human rights
abuses that continue to this day. You know well enough
what those
human rights abuses are, since you are aware of a secretly
circulated letter
at dismissal hearings and you yourself defied a legal
Ministry ruling in
my favor for more than two years.
Please be advised that no American professor
at our university will be denied the benefits of a Ministry
of Education
appeal ruling. That includes full back pay, a formal
apology, and
a formal nullification of the review hearing that approved
accusations
rejected in the Ministry Appeal ruling of 8 January 2001.
This letter is to make clear that I have no intention
of playing "hide-and-seek" with the administration at our
university much
longer. The law is not a game, it's a legal right; and I
intend to
exercise that right, just like Taiwan citizens exercise
those rights in
Taiwan and when living in lawful societies abroad.
Regarding the issue of the student involved
in misconduct, I urge you to realize that under no
circumstances
should a Dean of Student Affairs refuse to respond to a
request from a
faculty member to arrange a meeting with a student. If
there is law
in Taiwan then all national university officials are bound
by that law.
If a university dean can decide which cases merit
disciplinary action and
which do not, we don't have a government of laws, but a
government of officials.
My understanding of democracy is that it's a government of
laws, not officials
and not lawyers.
Now your Dean of Student Affairs, Professor
Ko Huei-chen, has denied me the right to a supervised
meeting with this
student for more than two years. Yet Dean Ko knows well
enough that
the student we're talking about wrote a secret and spiteful
letter used
at my dismissal hearings in 1999.
Dean Ko's argument, that the student will
become a better person if the case is forgotten, is morally
unsound, if
not ridiculous; and no-one outside of our university could
possibly conclude
differently. But if you wish to test this outside our
university,
then I am willing to do so. One thing I know for certain
is this
case is not over until that student has been formally
punished.
As president of a national university your
main concern should be the reputation of the university.
This means
its moral reputation as well as its academic reputation.
For how
can we be certain of academic standards if we're not
certain of moral standards?
Certainly no university in the global society
we live in today can justify or even explain the human
rights abuses our
university committed, including secret meetings,
circulation of a secret
letter, refusing to inform a professor of accusations
against him, and
reviving and approving accusations rejected on appeal.
True, you cannot assume responsibility for
abuses that occurred before your term as president here.
However,
as president you defied a legal Ministry ruling for more
than two years.
Moreover, your adminsitration then contested that ruling in
court, after
I won. Besides violating moral principles, if this wasn't
a waste
of taxpayers' money, I don't know what is.
How can a university in a democratic nation
like Taiwan claim, as your administration did, that the
benefit of winning
an appeal is winning only the right to appeal again? Try
espousing
this legal and moral principle in the international
community and see the
response you get. I'm curious how you would react if,
after passing
your Ph.D. exams in Germany you were told that, as a
foreigner, you had
to pass them again. But you know what I'm talking about,
since you
were raised on the Confucian principle of reciprocity, of
not doing to
others what you don't want others to do to you.
Why would a person appeal if he could not
win but merely had the right to appeal again? Do you think
that's
a rational basis for an appeal process to begin with, much
less to end
with?
But there are other abuses I wish to talk
about. If your lawyer, whose surname I think is Mr. Hwang,
believed
foreigners had no right to appeal, why didn't he say this
before the Ministry
ruling of 8 January 2001? In the law that I know, a
protest, to be
legal, must be made at the time of a hearing, not after the
hearing is
concluded.
Indeed, why did the university administration
participate in the appeal process in the first place? Why
did our
university hold countless "review" hearings on my case if I
had no right
to appeal? Finally, if I had no right to appeal, why,
despite the
Ministry appeal ruling that rejected accusations against
me, did the university
revive those accusations and approve them at a university
hearing?
(I would point out that I wasn't even invited to those
hearings, but nobody
outside our university could possibly accredit those
hearings.)
I ask you again: How can our university
have appeal hearings on my case if, as your lawyer claimed
in court, foreigners
have no right to appeal?
Come to think of it, how can you have sister
universities in advanced democracies, such as the United
States and England,
and benefit from human rights protections of Taiwan faculty
there, if you
argue, at the same time, that our university denies those
same protections
for foreign professors here? But you know what I'm talking
about,
since you were raised in a Confucian culture of
reciprocity, or not doing
to others what you don't want others to do to you.
Now when these abuses were published in The
China News, you were quoted as saying you didn't know what
to do.
What did you mean by that? Did you mean you don't
understand universal
moral principles that govern our lives from childhood on?
Did you
mean you don't understand that when a person wins, whether
a children's
game or a legal award, he wins? Are you saying if I score
more than
you in a game that, because I'm a foreigner, I didn't
really win?
Are these the ethics you live by? But you know what I'm
talking about,
since you were raised in a Confucian culture of
reciprocity, or not doing
to others what you don't want others to do to you.
But all of this is beside the point.
An administrator is supposed to know what to do in the job
he's getting
paid to do.
Besides, if you didn't know what to do (after a legal
Ministry ruling,
eight warning letters, and visits from Faculty Union
representatives) you
should apologize for that fact, not use that fact as an
excuse. But,
then, you allowed the university lawyer to use tax-paid
money to contest
a legal Ministry ruling only to have him withdraw the
lawsuit. The
law is not a poker game. Besides, if officials wish to
play poker,
they should use their own money, not that of taxpayers.
In addition, you claimed publicly, in a newspaper
report, that I am not entitled to full pay during the years
of my illegal
dismissal since I wasn't teaching during those years. What
kind of
moral logic is this? If a person wins an appeal but is
denied the
benefits of an appeal, what has he won? Besides, you
surely
know that I wasn't teaching due to the university's illegal
dismissal action
and, in fact, because during two of those years you defied
a legal Ministry
ruling.
If this is not devious logic, I don't what
is. Now you may pass this kind of moral equation off to
your legal
counsel, who advised or collaborated in defying a legal
Ministry ruling
in the first place; but I advise you don't try this kind of
moral equation
to faculty from outside our university. You may be
surprised at the
response you get. Unfortunately, with your continued
defiance of
both moral principles and law, it looks like it's going to
come to that
point sooner rather than later.
Now regardless whether the Taiwan government
finds you guilty of wrongdoing, there are higher laws. And
those
higher laws are shared by most faculty in our global
society, including
faculty at Taiwan's sister universities in America,
England, and elsewhere.
These higher laws include moral principles as well as
principles of human
rights. These include the right to be informed of
accusations.
The right to have those accusations proved. The right to
defend onself
against them. The right to appeal. The right to the
benefits
of an appeal ruling, including apology and compensation.
I'm not
making this up. Check a human rights charter to which
Taiwan subscribes.
All those rights were violated in my case.
Indeed, you defied the enforcement of the legal ruling in
my favor for
more than two years. In addition, during that time two of
your representatives
warned me to quit the univeristy or the university would
contest the appeal
ruling for years in the courts. Two faculty union members
witnessed
this conversation. But you know what I'm talking about,
since you
were raised in a Confucian culture of reciprocity, or not
doing to others
what you don't want others to do to you.
Regardless whether this letter, like numerous
others before, is having any effect, I wish to inform you
in the strongest
terms, as I said at the beginning of this letter, that no
American professor
will be denied the full benefits of a legal Ministry ruling
in Taiwan.
I will wait a few more days. After that I will make a
dedicated effort
to expose this case to human rights activists in America
and sister universities
there, as well as the Western press.
Sincerely,
Professor Richard de Canio
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
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