The value of avoiding damage to ethnic ties

Belgium an ethnically and linguistically diverse nation. Flanders, the more typically prosperous region in northern Belgium, is Dutch speaking, while French is spoken in Wallonia in the southern, less well off, part of the country.

To facilitate political integration of this ethnic and linguistic diversity, Belgium is ruled by a grand coalition Cabinet and is typically seen as a model of consensus democracy.

Although longstanding prejudice and conflict between north and south exist, there was always mutual tolerance and rational cohabitation.

However, during elections in June last year, Yves Leterme, leader of the Flemish Christian Democrats, angered French-speaking Belgians by saying that those living in the French-speaking areas were either lazy or stupid since they did not learn to speak Dutch.

Though Flemish Christian Democrats gained a parliamentary majority, parties from the French-speaking south refused to participate in a coalition government, which resulted in six months of limbo for the Belgian government.

In the end, King Albert II intervened by asking Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Flemish Liberals and Democrats party, to form an interim government. After marathon negotiations, the interim government won a vote of confidence in parliament on Dec. 23, granting it a three-month period of legitimacy to allow the parties to prepare for a new coalition.

Belgium us the important lesson that democracy needs to be carefully guarded. Furthermore, it requires mutual respect between ethnic groups, who must refrain from directing injurious language toward one another. Otherwise, even an advanced democratic nation will encounter problems.

Language society and constructs social truths. It can become a tool of racism and prejudice, which not only unfairly demarcates the status of different ethnic or racial groups, as well as gender inequality, but also enhances such inequalities.

In Taiwan, politicians and members of the public intentionally and unintentionally speak injuriously against particular ethnic groups, inflicting damage that cannot be easily reconciled by apologizing.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) recently made such a blunder in conversation with a group of Aborigines in Taipei, causing serious offense. KMT legislators said that Ma is prone to making lame jokes, but has absolutely no harmful intentions.

Still, regardless of what Ma's intentions were, this kind of language is damaging. At the same time, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) also made an insensitive remark regarding China recently, which could be hurtful to people of Mainlander extraction.

Though of speech is guaranteed in a democratic society, pejorative expressions against certain groups of individuals are still unacceptable. Last year, Tory shadow Cabinet minister Patrick Mercer in the UK was forced to resign from his position after stating that racial minorities were addressed as "black bastards" in the British military, a comment deemed unacceptable by the Tory party leader.

In order to preserve our hard-earned democracy, we must refrain from using injurious expressions, especially those referring to particular social or ethnic groups.

Hawang Shiow-duan is chair of the Taipei Society and a professor at Soochow University's Department of Political Science.

Translated by Angela Hong