Personal ideologies Nationalisms The World League for Freedom and Democracy (WLFD) is an international non-governmental organization of anti-communist politicians and groups.
[citation needed] The other participating states, including South Vietnam, Thailand, Okinawa, Japan, Hong Kong, and Macau also sent representatives.
[citation needed] In Taiwan, the event is also known as 123 Freedom Day (Chinese: 一二三自由日), due to a hand gesture devised by the Voice of Justice.
The league is led by President Yao Eng-chi, a former Kuomintang-MP and Secretary-General Ger Yeong-kuang, a professor of political science at National Taiwan University.
[citation needed] The APLFD was founded in the same year and under the same international background as the forming of the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), or the Manila Pact, in 1954, when the Second World War had concluded.
However, while the SEATO (1954–1977) was sort of an Asian Nato in nature, the APLFD is a people's organization trying to secure peace and prosperity through ideas and convictions and friendship.
Over the years, successors to the presidency of the Republic of China Chapter are Clement C. P. Chang, Chao Tze-chi, Yao Eng-chi, and Tseng Yung-chuan.
[citation needed] To adjust to the worldwide political changes after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War and to strive for recruiting more people to join, the WACL held its 22nd General Conference in Brussels, Belgium on 23 July 1990, and the delegates resolved that the organization should be renamed the "World League for Freedom and Democracy" (WLFD).
The decision made by the executive board was also confirmed by the members at the 31st WLFD General Conference in Taipei, ROC, on 13 January 2001.
On 1 August 2008, Ger resigned and was succeeded by Hsieh Wen-huang, Parliamentary Assistant to Vice President Tseng Yung-chuan of the ROC Legislative Yuan (Parliament).
Pearson was described in a Washington Post article as having neo-Nazi associations[12][13][14][15][16][17] and sources report that as a result of an article in The Washington Post in 1978 critical of WACL and alleging extreme right wing politics of Pearson that either he was expelled from WACL or at least was pressured into resigning from his position as World chairman.
[18][19][20] The US chapter of WACL, the United States Council for World Freedom (USCWF) was founded in 1981 by Major General John K. Singlaub.
[citation needed] Singlaub became a member of the WACL in 1980, and founded and became president of its U.S. chapter, the United States Council for World Freedom.
This branch generated controversy when it supported Nicaraguan guerrillas in the Iran–Contra affair[21] and, in 1981, the USCWF was placed under watch by the Anti-Defamation League, which said that the organization had increasingly become "a point of contact for extremists, racists, and anti-Semites".
[22][23] During the 1980s, the USCWF and WACL conducted a purge of these elements, and invited ADL observers to monitor its conferences;[24] by 1985, the Anti-Defamation League declared itself "satisfied that substantial progress has been made since 1981 in ridding the organization of racists and anti-Semites.
"[25] It is alleged that in the mid-1980s WACL had become a supplier of arms to anti-communist rebel movements in southern Africa, Central America, Afghanistan and the Far East.
[27] During this period, WACL was criticized for its presence in the organization of neo-Nazis, war criminals, and people linked to death squads and assassinations.
Congressmen, most notably 2008 presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ),[21][30] who sat on the United States Council for World Freedom (USCWF) Board of Directors in the early 1980s.
However, there was absolutely no evidence that McCain had ever resigned or asked for his name's removal from the United States Council for World Freedom.