Democrat to seek help for TFD
　

GOING TO THE TOP: A White House official said the US president would give every consideration to a letter appealing for support for the pro-democracy organization

By William Lowther
STAFF REPORTER , WASHINGTON
Monday, Jun 22, 2009, Page 3

A congressman has asked US President Barack Obama to become directly involved in the growing controversy over the future of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD).

Robert Andrews, a Democrat from New Jersey, said in a letter to the White House that the TFD’s existence and present general policy directions were very much in line with the “fundamental values of democracy and human rights which Taiwan shares with the US.”

It goes on to ask Obama to “urge” President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his administration to “let the TFD do its useful work the way it had done over the past six years.”

A number of other Congressmen are expected to publicly support Andrews’ letter later this week.

The White House could not confirm last night that Obama had actually read the letter, but an official said: “It’s an important and significant subject and I am sure he will give it every consideration.”

In the letter to Obama, Andrews said that he was writing “to bring an issue to your attention that is of great concern.”

He added: “Recently, news reports from Taiwan have come to our attention that the administration of Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou is planning to curtail the activities of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, reversing the Foundation’s policies of supporting democratic movements in other countries on grounds that this may offend the autocratic government of the People’s Republic of China and replacing the TFD’s personnel with people sympathetic to this accommodationalist philosophy.”

The TFD was founded in 2003 and modeled on the US’ National Endowment for Democracy with the aim of promoting democracy and human rights in Asia.

“The TFD liaised with Tibetan and Chinese dissident groups as well as organizations from the Czech Republic, former East Germany, Hungary and Poland, inviting speakers to Taiwan to discuss such issues as transitional justice and human rights,” the letter said.

“In January of this year, it also invited Freedom House to Taiwan to present its annual report of freedom in the world. It also supports democracy activists in Cuba,” it said.

Andrews added that he was concerned the Ma administration was seeking accommodation with China “at the expense of freedom and democracy, not only in Taiwan itself, but also in China and Tibet.”

“This would constitute another blow to Taiwan’s vibrant democracy,” he said.

DPP to reveal plan to assist former president Chen
　

By Rich Chang and Shelley Huang
STAFF REPORTERS
Monday, Jun 22, 2009, Page 3

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will soon release a plan to assist former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) with his ongoing court case, a party official said yesterday.

Chen has been held at the Taipei Detention Center since Dec. 30 on charges of money laundering, embezzlement and corruption. He was indicted on Dec. 12 and charged with illegally receiving or embezzling NT$490 million (US$15 million). He has repeatedly denied the charges and denounced his trial as political persecution.

DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said on Friday that the Taipei District Court’s extension of Chen’s detention violated his judicial rights. To protect his rights, the party had reached a consensus to come up with a plan to help Chen, Tsai said, adding it was mainly aimed at securing his immediate release.

DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said yesterday that on May 6 the party passed a resolution during a Central Standing Committee meeting that the party to request the court to release Chen immediately.

Cheng said the plan could consist of a signature drive or assembling lawyers to assist Chen.

A final decision had yet to be made, he said.

Cheng said Chen was treated unfairly during the judicial process, saying the judiciary violated a gag order during the investigation by leaking information from the investigation to the media, and that the Taipei District Court changed judges during the trial.

There were no judicial reasons to detain Chen during the trial, he said.

In other developments, despite Chen’s retraction of all requests to call witnesses, the district court said it would still summon Chen’s mother-in-law to testify in court this week.

Prosecutors had requested that the court summon Wu Wang-hsia (吳王霞), the mother of former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), to clarify whether Wu Shu-jen had used her mother’s account to transfer money and to determine how much the former first couple knew about such money transfers.

Chen had previously pleaded to the judge not to call his mother-in-law, saying she was more than 80 years old and was showing signs of dementia.

He has also retracted all requests to call remaining witnesses as part of his protest against what he calls an unfair judicial system.

However, Presiding Judge Tsai Shou-hsun (蔡守訓), who has the authority to decide whether to call certain witnesses in spite of Chen’s refusal, has ruled to call Wu Wang-hsia.

She is scheduled to appear at the Taipei District Court on Thursday, when Chen will be represented by his two court-appointed attorneys, Tseng Te-rong (曾德榮) and Tang Chen-chi (唐禎祺).

Other members of the former first family to appear in court this week include Chen’s daughter Chen Hsing-yu (陳幸妤), her brother Chen Chih-chung (陳致中) and her husband Chao Chien-ming (趙建銘). They will be questioned on perjury charges.

Prosecutors said they would arrange for extra police to maintain order when Chen Hsing-yu appears in court. The former first daughter is known for often being accompanied by large groups of people who act as her “bodyguards” to prevent her from being harassed.

An unenlightened double standard
　

By J. Michael Cole 寇謐將
Monday, Jun 22, 2009, Page 8

‘Despite its rhetoric, the US government is making it increasingly clear that it will not defend democracies beyond a certain cost.’

Not so long ago, when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic Progressive Party was president of Taiwan, Washington berated him for seeking UN membership for Taiwan or holding referendums on the matter. By acting in the interests of national dignity and through democratic means, Chen was somehow endangering the peace in the Taiwan Strait, acting provocatively and threatening the “status quo.”

Fast forward to last Monday. A leader of another US democratic ally — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — delivered a major policy speech that for all intents and purposes scuttled any chance of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Finally “bowing” to pressure from US President Barack Obama, Netanyahu cautiously entertained the idea of a “Palestinian state” for the first time, but, as one Israeli writer put it, he uttered the words “like a rotten tooth pulled from its socket without anesthesia.”

In his speech, the hardline Netanyahu also abandoned previous peace strategies, made no reference to the Palestinians’ connection to the land and refused to freeze Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. He also avoided mention of an Arab initiative that would grant recognition to Israel in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from land it captured in the war of 1967.

His request that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state also killed any chance of right of return for Palestinian refugees who live abroad — often in refugee camps — since they (or their ancestors) were expelled at the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

His conditions for a Palestinian state, meanwhile, included ironclad security guarantees, full disarmament in the Palestinian Territories, no Palestinian control of airspace, no right to form military alliances and Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem — all of which would make it impossible for Palestine to be a viable state.

Netanyahu’s tone, journalist Akiva Eldar wrote in the Israeli Ha’aretz newspaper, was “degrading and disrespectful … that’s not how one brings down a wall of enmity between two nations, that’s not how trust is built.”

And yet, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on June 15 that Netanyahu’s speech was “a big step forward,” while Obama said he saw “positive movement.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, meanwhile, called it a “first, important step in the right direction toward realizing a two-state solution,” former US president Bill Clinton saw Netanyahu’s speech as “opening moves,” while the EU dubbed it “a step in the right direction.” All of a sudden, Gertrude Stein’s rose was no longer a rose.

To be fair, many world leaders also insist that Israel freeze its settlements. But that is beside the point.

Rather than be a cause for optimism, Netanyahu’s speech spells disaster — and may have been made to ward off pressure from Obama. Netanyahu remains a hardliner and a friend of Israel’s religious right.

Palestinians and most of the rest of the Arab world saw through Netanyahu’s language and will reasonably treat the speech for what it was — empty rhetoric.

Violence will resume and Palestinians will once again be blamed for snubbing yet another “peace” initiative by an Israeli leader.

It is ironic that in their criticism of Chen, the US and the West — which all endeavored to frustrate his efforts to join the UN or hold referendums — rarely qualified their criticism with calls on China to stop threatening Taiwan with missiles and military maneuvers or stop blocking it from joining multilateral organizations.

Chen exercised democracy and was reviled for doing so. Netanyahu, on the other hand, undoes years of peace efforts and potential progress and is hailed as taking a step in the right direction.

Chen was a “troublemaker,” an “extremist” who threatened peace in the Taiwan Strait yet never departed from democratic norms or relied on force to achieve his aims.

Netanyahu, who never shied from unleashing the Israeli military, is taking “big steps forward” by aborting peace and seeking — quite undemocratically, it must be said — to turn Israel into an exclusionary “Jewish state” based on “race” and/or religion.

If, in Washington’s book, Israel and Taiwan are supposedly on the “right” side, our side, and both are supplied with billions of dollars in US weaponry, why the different treatment?

The answer to that question is China. Despite its rhetoric, the US government is making it increasingly clear that it will not defend democracies beyond a certain cost, and will do so only when ideology dovetails with real or, in the case of Israel, imagined geopolitical interests.

Perhaps if the Chen administration had done more to convince Washington that Taiwan matters on the level of unenlightened self-interest — as Jerusalem does brilliantly — rather than simply assume that the US will back its efforts because it is a democracy, Taiwan would have had more room to maneuver.

J. Michael Cole is a writer based in Taipei.