Among the US diplomats once stationed in Taipei, Ralph Clough and Mark Pratt had the closest relationships with “non-Party figures” and Taiwan’s democratic movement
However, Clough, an acting ambassador, was not welcomed by the Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) government, and sadly passed away years ago; Mark Pratt passed away in Washington on Aug. 11 at the age of 95.
Pratt was born in Massachusetts, and during his career as a diplomat he witnessed the pains of political transformations in China and Taiwan.
He firmly stood for democracy and freedom, by Taiwan, and was for the people rather than the government.
Under a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) party-state dictatorship, he had close contacts with members of the dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) movement, which included Kang Ning-hsiang (康寧祥) and Lin I-hsiung (林義雄) among others.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs under former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) was annoyed by this, but Pratt stood firm.
From 1978 to 1982, Pratt was a political counselor of the US embassy in Taipei and, after March 1979, was deputy director of the American Institute in Taiwan’s (AIT) Taipei Division.
During the large-scale International Human Rights Day demonstrations in Kaohsiung on Dec. 10 1979, Lin asked Pratt to travel south to observe.
Like Pratt, Lin was a bystander at the demonstrations, but unlike Pratt, was prosecuted. Pratt could not forgive the KMT for this.
Pratt’s telegrams about the Kaohsiung Incident and the court-martial trial can be found at the National Archives, which are detailed and objective, and not distorted by KMT propaganda. He also cooperated with David Dean, chairman of the AIT resident in Washington to persuade Chiang Ching-kuo to give the defendants lighter sentences.
In 1984, Henry Liu (劉宜良) wrote Chiang Ching-kuo’s biography under the pen name Chiang Nan (江南) and was assassinated in San Francisco. At the time, Pratt was in Washington serving as the director of Taiwan Affairs in the US Department of State.
After the assassin Chen Chi-li (陳啟禮) had eliminated Liu, he reported mission accomplished by a phone call to the ROC Military Intelligence Bureau station in San Francisco. His message was intercepted by US Telecom Intelligence.
The KMT thought they could resolve this by sacrificing Admiral Wang Hsi-ling (汪希苓), who had overseen the crime as the KMT’s intelligence station chief in Washington.
However, the information Pratt developed in the state department showed that the level of involvement in the murder was higher: right up to Chiang Ching-kuo’s own son. The US government was and has been unwilling to accept the sacrifice of Wang, keeping the pressure on as the murder opened a wide rift between Chiang Ching-kuo and then-US president Ronald Reagan, who was supportive of Taiwan. The case was closed only after the son, Chiang Hsiao-wu (蔣孝武), was assigned as the deputy representative in Singapore.
In 1989, during the Tiananmen Square incident, Pratt was the US consul general in Guangzhou, China.
While there was no turmoil in Guangzhou, Pratt insisted that his officers act in the spirit of democracy and humanitarian care.
Chiu Shao-chi (丘紹琪), editor of the New York World Journal, through Lu Shih-hsiang (盧世祥), called me from Beijing and said that her husband, a Chinese national, was in Beijing to collect materials for his thesis.
However, because Beijing was locked down he was unable to obtain a US visa and could at any time be detained.
At this time, former vice president of the University of Science and Technology of China Fang Lizhi (方勵之) was living in the US embassy in Beijing, having sought asylum there due to his alleged involvement in the protests. As a result, entry and exit of the embassy was strictly controlled by the Chinese police. Guangzhou was far away, and he could have been detained at any time en route when his papers were checked and if he had bought a train ticket. Pratt notified the consular officer of the embassy to ask Chiu, a foreign national, to bring her husband’s passport to the embassy for a visa. In this way, her husband was able to obtain a visa without having to go to the embassy in person, and narrowly escaped a terrible fate.
Pratt was a loyal friend of the Taiwanese, who fought for democracy in times of adversity. It was a blessing for the Taiwanese to have such a friend. Taiwanese who enjoy human rights and democracy will forever miss him.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by John Tkacik
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