Kadeer waiting for an apology and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy

Rebiya Kadeer is waiting for an apology from the KMT-ROC government.  She is planning to sue the current Taiwanese government for wrongly labeled her as a terrorist unless it apologizes and clears the allegation.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) of the Republic of China may soon have to decide if they represent China (the KMT government’s point of view) or Taiwan (the people) because Taiwan is represented at the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD), a foundation mainly funded and supervised by the MOFA.

Should MOFA apologize to Kadeer or should it “manage” the forthcoming lawsuit?

Without an apology, a member of the UNPO is going to have strange relationship with another member, namely Taiwan’s TFD.  Interesting!

On a side note, there are many newly added or amended rules in the TFD (the organization purposely does not have an English version for the rules?) that came into effect shortly after Ma won the presidential election in March, 2008.  These rules started to change even before Ma was inaugurated, but basically it added a new “control” branch to supervise the activities of the organization and also added new financial rules on how the fund of the organization is to be used, i.e., by allocation to party sponsored projects according to the legislative body’s party percentage composition.

I remember David had an excellent post discussing the controversial proposal to change the executive inside the TDF.  It really does not matter who is in the TDF because whoever is at that post, his freedom to carry out the organization’s mission is limited by the “control” branch.

Isn’t it time for a real Taiwanese organization to represent the Taiwanese people’s interests in the UNPO since the TDF is no longer acting freely?

Reference:

Some of the new / amended rules per TFD:

第十四條：本會設置監察人三至五人，為無給職，其中一人為常務監察人。監察人由董事會依本章程第十三條規定選任，任期與董事相同。常務監察人由監察人互為推選，並應列席董事會。

第十八條：本會經費預算業務之辦理原則如下：
一、本會年度預算三分之二運用於支持符合本會宗旨之國內外民主人權活動，推動國際雙邊或多邊合作網絡，補助國內外研究計畫，舉辦研討會及公共論壇，出版有關民主人權之書刊及本會人事行政、軟硬體設施等維持會務運作之開支。
二、本會年度預算得參照立法院通過之決議，配合在年度計畫中編列三分之一預算經費，予取得立法院百分之五以上席次之各政黨及黨團申請從事民主人權相關活動之用，最多以新台幣三千萬元為限；該預算需按立法院政黨席次之比例撥用；按政黨席次比例撥用之各預算經費，如未達運用標準者，預算應予凍結，不得挪用於其他政黨或活動。補助計畫作業要點另訂之。
三、本會不得贊助涉及統獨之活動，亦不得支助國外政治團體從事違反當地國家法律之行為，及遊說國外團體從事違反中華民國憲法之活動。