Pioneering democracy activists yesterday reminisced about the establishment and the achievements of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) ahead of its 30th anniversary and said the organization’s main goal would be safeguarding Taiwan’s sovereignty.
“In terms of diplomacy and protection of human rights in Taiwan, the association has done more in the past 30 years than the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration has,” former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) and former foreign minister Mark Chen (陳唐山), FAPA’s first and second presidents, told a press conference.
Chai and Chen, high-school classmates in Chiayi, had never imagined that they would enjoy prominent political careers when they began advocating independence for Taiwan in the US in the 1960s and established the FAPA in Los Angeles, California, on Dec. 8, 1982.
Photo: Liao Chen-hui, Taipei Times
Today, FAPA is a Washington-based lobbying organization made up of 53 chapters and more than 3,000 members that promotes Taiwan-US relations and cooperation as well as rights and interests of the Taiwanese.
According to Chai, the birth of FAPA was accidental because the overseas Taiwanese students wanted to establish a radio station in Guam at first.
With the Taiwanese-American community’s success to help Taiwan gain a quota of 20,000 immigrants to the US per year — after the original quota of 20,000 was given to China due to the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the US, democracy advocates in the US thought it was the right time to establish an organization like FAPA.
“Young people are probably not aware of what the FAPA has done, because they are too young to experience the Martial Law period and the days of serious infringement of human rights in Taiwan. But I’m proud to say that FAPA had played a pivotal role in helping Taiwan become a democracy it is today,” Chen said.
However, Chen said the organization would have to shift its focus from human rights to Taiwan’s sovereignty, as the latter had been eroded tremendously since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office in 2008.
Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Hsu Chung-hsin (許忠信) is scheduled to make a speech at the ceremony of FAPA’s 30th anniversary, which former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) and DPP representative to the US Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) would also attend, at San Jose, California, on Saturday.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS