[Fwd: Regarding human rights abuses at National Cheng Kung University]

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Regarding human rights abuses at National Cheng Kung University
Date:	Wed, 28 Mar 2007 01:21:58 -0700
From:	Richard <rdca25@yahoo.com>
To:	higher@mail.moe.gov.tw, rquinn@nyu.edu, ppaeu@mail.moe.gov.tw

Ming-Chiao Lai
President
National Cheng Kung University

cc: Ministry of Education, Scholars at Risk

28 March 2007

Dear President Lai,

    As you know, members of National Cheng Kung University's Faculty Union visited you yesterday evening regarding the university's defiance of a legal Ministry ruling of 8 January 2001 and related issues.
    These issues are plain, and should be to those who believe in principles of law and human rights:
    1. Do you believe it's proper for a university president, your predecessor, to defy a legal Ministry ruling?
    2. Do you believe it's proper for a university to hold an appeal, and participate in an appeal at the Ministry level, but then claim, after the university loses, that the appellant had no right to appeal in the first place?
    3. Do you believe it's proper for a university to claim a discriminatory policy towards foreign faculty, even as it maintains academic exchanges with colleges in that professor's native country, which insures Taiwan faculty of equal rights?
    4. Do you believe it's acceptable to deny increments to a professor even after a legal ruling dated 23 March 2004 (93, Taiwan calendar) required that compensatory increments be paid?
    5. Do you believe it's acceptable to contest the right to basic compensation for accrued losses, a compensation guaranteed by human rights charters?
    6. Do you believe the international academic community should maintain academic exchanges with NCKU based on facts related here?
    7. Do you believe a professor subject to human rights violations is entitled to a formal apology?
    8. Do you believe the faculty of a national university should be indifferent to the scope of human rights violations and official arrogance involved in this case?
    9. Do you believe a university president should rely on courts to establish or enforce human rights principles, or should a university president rather advance and uphold those principles himself?
    10. Do you believe the reputation of National Cheng Kung University is jeopardized by a pattern of human rights abuses, as detailed here?
    I appreciate your consideration of these issues.
   
    Sincerely,

    Richard de Canio
    Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
    National Cheng Kung University
    Tainan, Taiwan.