Charity formed to commemorate democracy pioneer

This article was written by June Tsai and published by the Taiwan Journal on March 17, 2006. It reports that on March 7, 2006, exactly 27 years after the death of Taiwan's democracy pioneer Lei Chen (1897-1979), a charitable trust was launched to commemorate his contribution to the struggle for democracy and human rights in Taiwan. It is hoped that the charitable trust will contribute to the promotion of these ideals in the future.

Lei founded the bi-monthly Free China magazine in Taipei in 1949. The mgagazine was strongly critical of the Chinese Communist Party whose revolution had driven the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomingtang, or KMT) government to take refuge in Taiwan. Despite this and the fact that Lei had served as a senior advisor to President Chiang Kai-shek from 1950 to 1953, he was arrested for sedition in September 1960 and sentenced to 10 years in prison in October 1960. The reason for such harsh treatment was that Lei's magazine had consantly criticized Chiang's authoritarian rule throughout the 1950s.

In the history of Taiwan's movement toward democracy, Lei's arrest and sentencing are known as the "Lei Cheng Incident". He foresaw that Taiwan, while still under an authoritarian government, had a chance of becoming a democracy. Lei was an idealistic liberal and a nationalist. However, when it came down to choosing between these two, he opted for democracy, freedom, human rights and constitutional rule. In his view, nationalist sentiment should be able to find a proper place in a nation's cultural, social and political life. Nationalist sentiment should not be able to undermine what should be Taiwan's primary goal - the safeguarding of human rights, the championing of social justice and the pursuit of constitutional democracy.

Lei wrote a memoir during his 10 years in prison. However, it was confiscated before his release. This memoir, as well as many documents about the Lei Chen Incident, have since disappeared. Nonetheless, according to this article, declassified documents compiled by the Academia Historica in 2002 reveal that six hours before a military court announced Lei's verdict, Chiang intervened and directed the court to sentence Lei to at last 10 years' imprisonment. Chiang also ordered that the court's verdict and sentence must not be overturned in any future appellate proceeding.

A year after his release from prison in 1970, Lei advocated the establishment of two Chinas in a Washington Post interview. He had anticipated that the Republic of China's right to represent the Chinese people in the United Nations would soon be transferred to the People's Republic of China - which happened in October 1971.

In January 1972, Lei proposed to the Republic of China's top officials that the nation's name should be changed to the "Democratic State of China-Taiwan". He also recommended that Taiwan should renounce sovereignty over the Chinese mainland in order to counter any of China's claim of sovereignty over Taiwan. Finally, Lei called for a constitutional conference to draw up a new constitution.

Lei opposed the British Commonwealth model as a framework for relations between Taiwan and China. This position is believed to have based on the need to defend universal human values that can serve as the foundation of a united Taiwan.

According to this article, President Chen Shui-bian was one of three lawyers who took legal action on Lei's behalf in 1988. The lawyers requested an investigation into past injustices committed against Lei. They also demanded compensation from the KMT government for its confiscation and apparent destruction of Lei's memoir. After Chen became the president in 2000, he ordered the Ministry of National Defense to recover as many government documents about the Lei Chen Incident as possible. In 2001, some 168,000 documents were recovered while 49 people were interviewed. The documents were published by the Academia Historica in 2002.

Lei's daughter Lei Mei-ling was the driving force behind the establishment of the charitable trust. She was forced to emigrate to the United States in 1974 by the KMT government, and therefore was deprived the chance to meet her father regularly. She has been hoping to fulfill Lei's dying wish to set up a foundation that is devoted to cultivating democracy and human rights, particularly through education.

The charitable trust fund was established with the assistance of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and initial donations from Lei's relatives. It welcomes further donations from those who support its cause.