Taiwan Church News

3377 Edition

November 14 - 20, 2016

Church Ministry

A Memoirs Of Dr Chen Tang-shan Is Launched

Reported by Chiu Kuo-rong

In the afternoon on November 13, a memoirs of Dr Chen Tang-shan or Dr Mark Chen, former foreign minister ofTaiwan, was launched with a subtitle as "Blacklist and Foreign Minister", at the alumni consortium of National Taiwan University. Except Dr Chen Tang-shan himself showed up in the event, both Dr Lou Fu-chuan, former Taiwan ambassador to Japan, and Associate Prof Chen Yi-seng of Graduate Study of Taiwan History at National Cheng-chi University were specially invited recommend or introduce this historical memoirs in modern Taiwan.

Dr Lou Fu-chuan, as a high school classmate of Dr Chen, was not only his compatriot in the World United Formosansfor Independence, but also had been co-worked with Mark and served as a high ranking diplomat under President Chen Sheui-bian's administration. Dr Lou Fu-chuan retrieved his joint-cooperations and front-line struggles with Dr Chen under the difficult days of KMT's martial law, describing vividly the hard-won burgeons and blossoms of Taiwan independence movement in the second half of the 20th century.

As a historian, studying Taiwan's political history for decades, Prof Chen Yi-seng affirmed the influences that DrChen exercised during his formidable jobs at Formosan Association for Public Affairs(FAPA), World United Formosans for Independence, and his later services in foreign affairs and national security under DPP government from 2004 to 2008. Dr Chen's recalcitrant salmon-like efforts, fighting against KMT's notorious blacklist inhibiting dissident Taiwanese from returning back to Taiwan, is absolutely a remarkable contribution to Taiwan's democracy, commented Prof Chen.

During the event of book launch, Dr Chen Tang-shang recollected the historical context when the former President Chen Shuei-bianwas illegally brought into jail and how he worked hard to get a qualification of medical parole for the President A-bian.

Now DPP regime has a dominating power from central government to local city hall, though, the juridical reform still has a long way to go, lamented Dr Chen, as all current criminal cases against former President A-bian are all malevolent conspiracies fabricated by Ma Ying-jeou and his KMT pawns in juridical system.

Translated by Peter Wolfe