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.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS