A historic reunion occurred earlier this month in a small Asian country that is playing a large role on the geopolitical stage. The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy invited 30 foreign human rights activists, myself among them, to return to Taiwan so we could be honored for our contributions to democracy and independence. Our host for the weeklong event was Chen Shui-bian, a former political prisoner who is now the president of Taiwan.

Many of today's governmental leaders are former political prisoners and human rights activists who were involved with the missionaries and scholars in our group. They hosted us as we traveled around Taiwan telling our stories and being welcomed by thousands of people and government leaders.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, we had all played a role in the underground prodemocracy movement in Taiwan. As the United States was reeling from the assassinations of the Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Kuther King Jr., in Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek, and later his son Chiang Ching-kuo, were ruling with a bloody iron fist. High profile cases of torture imprisonment and assassination were coupled with the daily indignities of information control, language suppression and corruption.

Many in our group of foreign human rights activists had been deported or blacklisted by the Taiwan government. Among them were a Methodist missionary couple, Mike and Judy Thornberry. With a small group of other foreign clergy and scholars, they helped the country's most famous opposition leader escape during the most repressive period of the elder Chiang's rule.

Peng Ming-min, a native Taiwanese (as opposed to the mainlanders who fled China in 1949), had studied law in Japan and France. In the early '60s he wrote a manifesto calling for the independence of Taiwan. Chiang's government charged him with sedition and placed him under house arrest, and for a time it appeared that he might be executed.

The Thornberry and their friends decided to send Peng secretly out of the country. In 1971, they devised a plan to forge a passport, create a disguise, and place him on a commercial plane through Hong Kong to Sweden.

The plan succeeded, to the fury of the government. Taiwan officials publicly claimed that the American CIA had been behind the plan, revving up significant anti-American sentiments on the island.

Taiwan's rulers never figured out that the Thornberry were responsible for the daring escape. They did falsely charge the missionary couple with terrorism, and deported them. The American government seized Mike's passport and for decades did not allow him to leave the United States.

After martial law was repealed in 1987, Peng returned and ran unsuccessfully for president. He remains tremendously popular.

The reunion with his co-conspirators, including me, was the first time we had met in Taiwan for over 30 years.

On December 10, we gathered in a chapel in southern Taiwan and reminisced. At the end of that session, and by no plan at all, we began to sing "We Shall Overcome."

It was not a celebration of final victory, Though we were all thankful that martial law has disappeared and that Taiwan is known as a leader of human rights in Asia, there are still human rights problems to resolve, such as issues of labor, women, migrant workers and cultural freedom.

But Taiwan today has no political prisoners and is ruled by law.

An immense human rights problem confronts Taiwan right now, and it is not coming from within. The problem is the Chinese threat to destroy Taiwan's cultural and political identity by seizing control of the island by military force. President Chen has reacted to this threat by calling for a referendum demanding that China stop threatening to use force.