Author: Professor Shutsung Liao (1931.3.24 -
2014.7.20)
- first published in 1990
The North American Taiwanese Professors’
Association (NATPA) was established with the goal of caring for Taiwan’s
democracy and welfare, and to speak out for Taiwan. NATPA was formally
established in 1980, and it was among the earliest organizations that were
established by overseas Taiwanese people. Before this, Taiwanese organizations
were scattered across the United States, and due to the illegality of holding
private political activities, many kinds of meetings had to be held secretly,
restricting the mobility of participants. Thus, experts from various different
locations were never able to assemble and communicate with one another. NATPA
was the first Taiwanese organization to use a democratic voting system to elect
its leaders, and I am one of its founding members and the first president of
the association.
NATPA’s establishment can be traced to 1975. One October night that year, a
number of Taiwanese professors teaching in the Midwest gathered at my humble
home. We discussed issues like Taiwan’s political and social conditions, the
establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States, and
the future of Taiwan. We arrived at the topic of needing to form an
organization that could bring together Taiwanese scholars and specialists from
around North America to strengthen interchanges, teamwork, mutual support, and
cooperation between us, in order to work hard to make Taiwan into a democratic
and prosperous new country. In the following years, this consensus continued to
linger in people’s minds.
On December 10th, 1979, the Formosa Incident occurred in Kaohsiung. Tangwai
(“outside the party”) figures held an International Human Rights memorial
parade, but there were undercover agents that the Kuomintang sent to infiltrate
the demonstrators and start riots. On December 13th, the Garrison Command
arrested 14 people involved in the Formosa Incident on suspicion of
“rebellion.” These 14 people included Chang Chun-hung, Yao Chia-wen, Wang Tuoh,
Chen Chu, Chou Ping-te, Su Chiu-cheng, Annette Lu, Chi Wan-sheng, Lin
Yi-hsiung, Chen Chung-hsin, Yang Ching-chu, Chiu I-pin, Wei Ting-chao, and Shih
Ming-teh, who was wanted. The Formosa Magazine headquarters in Taipei and its
various offices were call closed down. On December 14th, the publisher of Formosa
Magazine, Huang Hsin-chieh, was arrested by the Garrison Command with the full
support of all the “thousand-year legislators” in the Legislative Yuan. Later,
Lin Hung-I, Shih Ming-teh, Tsai Yu-chuan, and Kao Chun-ming were also arrested.
After the Formosa Incident, 137 Taiwanese professors and experienced scholars
from over 60 different universities and well-known research institutions
jointly issued a statement in the Washington Post that strongly protested
against the Kuomintang government’s use of the Formosa Incident as an excuse to
make massive arrests of Tangwai democratic figures, human rights activists,
peoples’ representatives, and religious figures. This incident increased the
immediacy of our need to form an organization for North America’s Taiwanese
professors and scholars. Thus, at the end of December, a number of Taiwanese
professors and scholars from California collectively proposed that we create
the North America Taiwanese Professors’ Association. And so, preparatory
activities began, unfolding quickly like a raging fire.
The Formosa Incident was a turning point in the history of the Taiwan
democratic movement. Though the older generation of the opposition movement
were all imprisoned, the young lawyers of the law firms that had defended them
had been heavily influenced by their actions. These individuals devoted
themselves to the opposition movement, and became a new generation of leaders
who, after the political party rotation, became Taiwan’s political leaders. The
defendants and their defense lawyers are as listed: Huang Hsin-chieh (Chen
Shui-bian, Cheng Ching-lung), Shih Ming-teh (Cheng Sheng-chu, You Ching), Chang
Chun-hung (You Ching, Kuo Chi-ren), Yao Chia-wen (Frank Hsieh, Su Tseng-cheng),
Lin Yi-hsiung (Chiang Peng-chien, Chang Cheng-hsiung), Annette Lu (Lu
Chuan-sheng, Cheng Kuan-li), Chen Chu (Kao Rui-cheng, Chang Huo-yuan), Lin
Hung-hsuan (Chang Chun-hsiung, Li Sheng-hsiung).
Taiwan’s opposition movement has been advancing for centuries, and with the
spirit of “sweet potatoes are not afraid of dropping on the ground and rotting,
they only hope that they will have branches and leaves for many more
generations,” the people of the movement have inherited their past and carried
it into the future. Overseas Taiwanese professors and scholars hoped that when
the situation in Taiwan changed, they would be able to contribute their
strength and unite the masses to help the Taiwanese people, both at home and
abroad, Taiwanese society, and its democratic reforms. All this contributed to
the establishment of the North America Taiwanese Professors’ Association, which
has had a very strong and far-reaching impact on Taiwanese people living on the
island, in the United States, and in Canada.
On February 16th, 1980, the first preparatory meeting was held at the
international dorm at the University of Chicago. Sixteen professors attended
the meeting, including myself, Chin-che Chang, Parris Hsu-Cheng Chang, Ping-chi
Chen, Yuan-cheng Huang, Kim Lai Huang, Robert Y. Lai, Chin-Chu Lin, Chin-Teh Sun,
Wen-Yih Sun, Edward Gibin Tanng, Chia-yin Tsai, De-Min Wu, Kenneth K. Wu,
Sheng-liang Yang, and Wen-liang Yen. During the meeting, we discussed the
drafting of the organizational charter, and I was selected as the interim
President, responsible for preparing for the establishment of the organization.
It was also decided that the professors’ association should hold meetings in
Taiwan and use the results of their research to give back to Taiwan and serve
our countrymen.
On February 28th of the same year, a murder occurred at Lin Yi-hsiung’s home.
His mother, Yu A-mei, and two 7-year-old twin daughters, Lin Liang-chun and Lin
Ting-chun were killed, and his 9-year-old daughter, Lin Huan-chun (Judy
Linton), was seriously injured. The murderer’s cruelty truly cannot be
paralleled; it was truly awful. At that time, Mrs. Lin had been visiting
Xindian Military prison where Lin Yi-hsiung was being detained. Moreover, since
the National Security Bureau had put the Lin residence under 24-hour
monitoring, many people thought that this was a deliberate political murder.
The incident occurred on the 33rd anniversary of the 228 Incident.
After the professor’s association preparatory committee received a telegram
from Taiwan, I immediately sent a statement of harsh protest to the Republic of
China Consulate General in Chicago. I also contacted other Taiwanese
associations in North America and American governmental agencies. At the time,
the consulate had not yet received the news, and so they did not believe that
the incident had really occurred. One hour later, they called me to acknowledge
the truth, and expressed that they were surprised by the efficiency of
communication between Taiwanese groups.
On April 24th, the association was officially established and named the North
America Taiwanese Professors’ Association (NATPA), and it was registered as a
non-profit corporation with the state of Illinois. On June 7th, 1983, the U.S.
federal government’s Internal Revenue Service certified NATPA as a non-profit,
tax-exempt organization.
NATPA has continued to be concerned about the Lin Family Massacre, and we have
continued to stay in contact with Lin Yi-hsiung and his family through his
imprisonment and after his release. NATPA also supported his later studies at
Harvard University in the U.S., University of Tsukuba in Japan, and the
University of Cambridge in the U.K.
On August 9th, 1980, NAPTA held its inaugural meeting in a conference room in
the University of Chicago Ben May Department for Cancer Research. Over forty
members from around North America attended the meeting. During the meeting, the
charter and bylaws were formally adopted. We cleared outlined the association’s
four missions: (1) enhance scientific expertise and knowledge and their
practical usage; (2) promote international educational and cultural exchanges
with Taiwan; (3) support research on Taiwan-related issues; (4) promote and
maintain justice and welfare for the Taiwanese people. Three work goals were
also established: (1) strengthening and expanding the organization, which
includes recruiting members, creating local chapters, and finding Taiwanese
people with technical expertise and other human resources; (2) contacting other
organizations and governmental agencies, which includes cooperating with and contacting
other Taiwanese American organizations, and both public and private, social,
cultural, and educational organizations in the U.S. and abroad; (3) giving back
to our homeland, which includes promoting the democratization of Taiwan,
protecting social justice and human rights, and assisting with or providing the
expertise and skills needed to establish a prosperous Taiwan. These decisions
determined the goals and direction for NATPA.
During the meeting, four Regional Directors and five General Directors were
selected. The Regional Directors were Parris Hsu-Cheng Chang of the Eastern
Region, David Tsay of the Northern Region, Fu-Mei Chang of the Western Region,
and myself of the Midwestern Region. The General Directors were Kim Lai Huang,
De-Min Wu, C. Y. Tsai, Ping-chi Chen, and Robert Y. Lai. The council selected
me as its first president, and Edward Gibin Tanng was put in charge of
secretarial and financial management duties. Additionally, we established
committees to manage research, publication, finance, and membership, and
established that the Presidency would last for one year. After the political
party rotation in 2000, Directors Fu-mei Chang and Parris Hsu-Cheng Chang
returned to Taiwan. Fu-Mei Chang served as the Minister of the Overseas Community
Affairs Council, and Parris Hsu-Cheng Chang served as a Democratic Progressive
Party legislator and the Deputy Secretary-General of the National Security
Council.
After NATPA was established, it began actively intervening into issues
regarding Taiwan’s development. At the time, Taiwan’s economy was growing
rapidly with the accelerating development of a variety of different industries,
and nuclear power plants were introduced to help meet electricity demands.
NATPA contacted the Washington D.C. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Policy
Development Center and was surprised to learn that the Kuomintang government
planned to spend billions of U.S. dollars to buy nuclear energy equipment that
have already been prohibited in the States. NATPA urged Kuomintang authorities
not to develop nuclear power plants without carefully assessing the safety of
nuclear energy and the long-term impacts it could have on the local residents
and environment. This statement was written in English and Mandarin, and it
called on people both at home and abroad to come together to resolve this
issue. Additionally, since NATPA has a number of experts in nuclear energy
involved in relevant U.S. agencies, they were able to assist in training the
individuals responsible for handling Taiwan’s nuclear accidents. For a long
time, Taiwan was a region with a very high prevalence of Hepatitis B
infections. In 1980, Merck Sharp pharmaceutical company and the New York Blood
Center planned to test their vaccines in Taiwan, but there was strong backlash
because it was still unclear whether the vaccines were safe. I directly
contacted Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman, who was formerly employed by the University
of Chicago and was in charge of the Merck Sharp Taiwan trials, to discuss the
quality and danger of the vaccines. I also collected relevant medical reports
for Taiwan’s reference. In the end, this vaccine testing plan, the safety of
which was still unknown, was ultimately cancelled. After this, however, the
Kuomintang government immediately introduced a French vaccine that was still
being tested.
In 1981, NATPA hosted the Taiwanese American Conference – East Coast and their
annual meeting in cooperation with the Taiwanese Association of America from
July 2nd to July 5th. Since then, NATPA has frequently co-organized its annual
meeting with the four major Taiwanese American Conferences – East Coast, West
Coast, Midwest, and South. At the 1981 annual meeting, Yao-rung Chen (Eastern
Region), Chin-Teh Sun (Midwestern Region), Wen-Hsiung Li (Southern Region), and
Wylie Lee (Western Region) were selected as the new Regional Directors. This
new Board of Directors elected C. Y. Tsai as the second presented, and his term
began on August 1st. The Board also decided to establish its headquarters in
Illinois, and they asked me to become the Executive Director of the
headquarters office. The headquarters’ main tasks are to (1) be responsible for
external communication and negotiations; (2) assist each president with their
work; (3) hold responsibility for making tax and other reports to the federal
and local governments; (4) do research and provide support as the
organization’s headquarters. To this day, I am still doing my best for NATPA’s
headquarters.
