-------- Original Message --------
| Subject: | Letter to Professor Chih-Chieh Chou Concerning Human Rights Abuses at National Cheng Kung University |
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| Date: | Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:06:03 +0800 |
| From: | rdca25@gmail.com |
| To: | ccchou@mail.ncku.edu.tw |
Professor Chih-Chieh Chou
Department of Political Science,
Graduate Institute of Political Economy,
College of Social Sciences,
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
27 July 2010
I recently came across your article in the university's Research Express (Volume 12, Issue 9; February 26, 2010, online at http://research.ncku.edu.tw/re/commentary/e/20100226/1.html).
You begin by lauding Human Rights Day, 2009, citing "the Universal Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," then adding,
From now on, the citizens can resort to the articles of the Covenants to plea for compensation once they assume their rights and interests are deprived through laws violating the Covenants, which makes Taiwan the only Chinese society with comprehensive human rights framework around the globe. Such accomplishment is way ahead of China while they celebrate their 60th anniversary and brag about their wealth and strong national defense power (p. 1). (My emphasis.)
You refer "to the protection and installation of civilian economic and social rights," and, listing "practical rights issues," you conclude, contrasting China and Taiwan by stating that "Taiwan’s only competitive edge in interaction is the prevalent installation of these humanitarian values. Taiwan should seize the opportunity to demonstrate our Chinese human rights experience and its content to the international community!" (my emphasis).
I applaud your concern over human rights in China. But I'm curious why you are so concerned about enforcing human rights in China when there are egregious human rights at our own university that you can help to enforce too.
You are a professor at our university, so you should be aware that in 1999 I was illegally dismissed from the Department at Foreign Languages and Literature at our very university. A secret letter was circulated at several "oversight" committees, presumably to insure my dismissal when it became apparent the original accusations against me were invalid. I should add I wasn't even aware of those accusations until after the dismissal hearing, and then only by hearsay.
My dismissal, egregiously in violation of basic human rights protections, nonetheless passed all "oversight" committees at our university. For obvious reasons it was overturned by the Ministry of Education on appeal in a ruling dated 8 January 2001. In pedagogic style, the ruling highlighted human rights abuses, presumably to insure NCKU officials would not repeat the same mistakes.
However at our university even a legal Ministry ruling is not sufficient to guarantee human rights enforcement. Then what is the purpose of a Ministry appeal? I have no idea how our colleagues would answer that question if they felt compelled to.
Subsequently, university president, Kao Chiang, refused to enforce that Ministry ruling for nearly two and a half years (attachment), even after an international human rights group, Scholars at Risk, queried him about the delay (see attachments). Only after repeated pressure from the Ministry of Education (attachment) did the university finally comply with a legal Ministry ruling. Even then the university tried to impose penalties against me, despite the Ministry ruling; as if I never won the case.
However, before the university finally complied it argued foreign faculty are not protected by the Teacher's Law. Hence, even after the dismissal action against me was canceled, in December, 1999 after an eight-month delay (I remind you, I had to renew my visa every two months), I was informed I had to be "reviewed" again, since the case was now being treated not as a firing action but as a hiring action. Can you follow the logic here?
American professors, you see, are not protected by the Teacher's Law, the same law that protects you, or the principle of equality under the law that protected you as a student in New York (SUNY).
(The university actually went to court to prove this, apparently unconcerned about saying so in public; yet NCKU has been called the fourth-ranked university in Taiwan.)
Now since it was the case (as the university argued) that the dismissal action was really a hiring action, even though the university's dismissal action could not pass the university committee I could lose my job anyway, for now it was an issue not of me being fired illegally but just of me not being hired, presumably on legal criteria. So, you see, semantics and human rights don't make good bedfellows.
I'm curious, Professor Chou. According to our (NCKU) web site, you received your degree at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. Did that New York university ever tell Taiwanese professors they were not protected by the same laws that protect American professors? If not, we have a human rights problem in Taiwan. Isn't that so?
Now NCKU university held appeal hearings here. The university also sent representatives to appeal hearings at the Ministry of Education in Taipei. At no time did the university ever argue that Americans had no right to appeal. It would have been against the law as it's understood here anyway, although our officials have a different understanding of the law (attachment).
But laws are beside the point now. I'm arguing fundamental honesty now, not law. Because after I won the Ministry of Education appeal the university then argued that, as a foreign teacher I had no right to appeal in the first place.
I'm curious, Professor Chou, since your department is Political Science, and your specialties, according to our web page, include "Human Rights" and "Political Change," how is it possible for the university to hold appeal hearings, and even attend them in Taiwan, if, indeed, I had no right to appeal in the first place? Can you explain this legal conundrum to me, since my department is Foreign Languages and Literature and I'm relatively unenlightened about political science.
But let me sum up the issues here for clarity. The university itself held appeal hearings, which involved numerous committee meetings in a three-tiered process, including department, college, and university committees. These "oversight" committees repeatedly passed my dismissal, before and even after the Ministry overturned it.
The university also debated the case at the Ministry of Education in Taipei. Yet after the university lost it argued I had no right to appeal.
This of course would be rejected in an American court based on the legal principle known as estoppel. Let me quote Wikipedia on this term:
Estoppel in its broadest sense is a legal term referring to a series of legal and equitable doctrines that preclude "a person from denying or asserting anything to the contrary of that which has, in contemplation of law, been established as the truth, either by the acts of judicial or legislative officers, or by his own deed, acts, or representations, either express or implied."
But this is a legal principle. There's the deeper moral principle whose violation is even more audacious, since one does not expect officials of a university that is commonly called a prestige university in Taiwan to behave in such a duplicitous manner, more like children in a school yard who want to win a fight by whatever means than as accredited professors and honorable officials, especially since many professors here, like yourself, were accredited in the United States and were treated equitably while matriculated at universities or teaching there.
Because of the serious human rights issues involved, I will fight this case no matter how long it takes. I have even opened a web site to that purpose.
But in the meantime it worries me that every time someone googles for "human rights" and "Taiwan" they will find, not details about egregious human rights violations at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan (although with my blog I hope to correct this problem) but the words of your article pleading to "Make Human Rights Work in Mainland China through Cross-Strait Dialogue."
With all due respect, Professor Chou, although I applaud your concern over human rights in Mainland China, isn't it of more immediate concern to make sure that human rights work in Taiwan, specifically at our own university, first?
Not only are you the author of that article in Research Express (previously published in United Daily), but the editorial staff of Research Express includes our current university president, Michael M. C. Lai, Senior Executive Vice President Da Hsuan Feng, and Senior Executive Vice President Hwung-Hweng Hwung. Yet I have repeatedly petitioned President Lai and other officials here to resolve this outstanding human rights case, to no avail.
In the 1960s there was a slogan, THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY. Although I applaud your thinking globally about human rights issues, I really think you should act locally too.
Your well-meaning article reminds me of another saying, this one by Edmund Burke, that "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
I will give my colleagues the benefit of the doubt and assume those not directly involved in my illegal dismissal or in the enforcement of that dismissal are "good" men and women. But by doing nothing about this case, the evidence of which is fully documented (and only partly represented in my attachment) you are not insuring (to quote from your article) "the protection and installation of civilian economic and social rights" in Taiwan.
To paraphrase the final line of your essay, I modestly ask that you "seize the opportunity to demonstrate our Chinese human rights experience and its content to the international community!" by enforcing human rights at our university. This can be done by insuring a formal apology and compensation from National Cheng Kung University over its human rights abuses. If human rights can't be enforced here they certainly won't be enforced in Mainland China, no matter how many articles you publish.
Sincerely,
Richard de Canio
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
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