On Wednesday, former US congressman Jim Leach passed away at his home in Iowa at the age of 82. Leach served in the US Congress from 1976 until 2006 and played a key role in Taiwan’s transition to democracy.
In the early 1980s, as a member of the so-called “Gang of Four” in the US Congress — together with former congressman Stephen Solarz and former senators Ted Kennedy and Claiborne Pell — he initiated frequent hearings on Taiwan’s martial law (which continued until 1987), the lack of democracy, human rights and press freedom, and the — democratic — future of Taiwan. Fulton Armstrong and Richard Bush (who later served as chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan), key aides to Leach and Solarz, provided expert staff leadership in those difficult days.
Leach became interested in Taiwan in 1978, when one of his aides — Cindy Sprunger, the daughter of American missionaries in Taiwan — brought him into contact with the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, which was a vocal advocate of human rights and democracy. He was also in close contact with Peng Ming-min (彭明敏), a prominent advocate for Taiwan’s democracy who had escaped house arrest in Taiwan in 1970, and was living and working in the US in the 1970s.
Leach played a key role in the aftermath of the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime of Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) arrested and imprisoned the leadership of the democratic opposition dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) movement. Through a variety of channels, Leach sent pleas for lenience, which eventually resulted in reduced sentences for the “Kaohsiung Eight” defendants.
US Congress focused on the Kaohsiung events in February 1980. In his testimony, Leach warned the KMT regime that harsh sentences would result in “profound consequences for the future stability of Taiwan and for US-Taiwan relations.”
Later, in 1980, Leach, together with Pell, were the coauthors of the human rights clause in the Taiwan Relations Act. The clause became an important legal basis for the US Congress to speak out on the lack of human rights in Taiwan throughout the 1980s.
In the subsequent years, Leach and the other “Gang of Four” members played a key role in putting the spotlight on a series of political murders by the KMT regime, including the Feb. 28, 1980, murder of the mother and twin daughters of imprisoned opposition leader Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), and the July 2, 1981, murder of visiting Carnegie Mellon professor Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), who died after having been arrested by Taiwan’s secret police. Leach and the other members of the “Gang of Four” made strong statements criticizing the murders and urging the KMT authorities to come clean. The murders have not been resolved to this day.
The October 1984 murder of Chinese-American writer Henry Liu (劉宜良) in Daly City, California, brought US pressure — including from Leach and his colleagues — resulting in the arrest and sentencing of the perpetrators: two Bamboo Union operatives who had acted on behalf of the Republic of China military intelligence bureau.
One particularly poignant moment came in 1982, when Leach met with General Wang Sheng (王昇) — one of the main secret police officials under Chiang — and lectured him on the Three Principles of the People, saying that the KMT had “made progress on minsheng [民生, the livelihood of the people] and minzu [民族, nationalism, although Taiwanese were still largely excluded] but had a long way to go on minquan [民權, democracy].” Wang was flabbergasted and changed the topic.
After Taiwan made its transition to democracy in the early 1990s, Leach continued to have good relations with Taiwan’s democratically elected leaders, including then-presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). In 2004, he traveled to Taiwan to attend the second inauguration of Chen.
I wholeheartedly agree with President William Lai (賴清德), who on Thursday wrote on X: “Our thoughts are with the family & friends of former US Rep Jim Leach, whose tireless defense of democracy & human rights raised a beacon of hope for Taiwan & the world. We mourn his passing & express our deepest appreciation for his decades of support for democracy in Taiwan.”
Gerrit van der Wees is a former Dutch diplomat who teaches Taiwan history and US relations with East Asia at George Mason University. From 1980 to 2016 he and his Taiwan-born wife, Chen Mei-chin (陳美津), published the Taiwan Communique, a bi-monthly publication chronicling Taiwan’s transition to democracy.
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