The Taiwan Civil Government (TCG) is a group of con artists. TCG member Hung Su-chu (洪素珠), a self-styled citizen journalist who has been hurling insults at elderly veterans in public, is no different from former diplomat Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英), who described himself as a “high-class Mainlander” and called Taiwanese taibazi (台巴子), or Taiwanese rednecks.
These people with their extreme ethnic prejudices belong to a small minority. In the wake of Hung’s tirades, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) announced that it would propose an act banning ethnic discrimination. However, such legislation would be irrelevant in this case and the proposal is an embarassment for the party.
People have different experiences growing up and they all, to a certain extent, have stereotypes or biases about ethnicity, religion, gender, age and region, but as long as these stereotypes and biases do not violate laws or infringe upon the rights of others, they could not be said to be discriminatory.
Although the US Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal,” the nation continued to maintain slavery when the US Constitution was adopted in 1787. At that time, African Americans had no right to vote and they were counted as three-fifths of their actual numbers when determining a state’s population. After the abolition of slavery, racial segregation continued in the US until the 1950s, while even white women were denied the right to vote until 1920. These are examples of what racial and gender discrimination is really all about.
The KMT is trying to propose a law to ban ethnic discrimination following Hung Su-chu’s insults at elderly veterans based on her personal prejudice. This is quite ironic coming from that party: The KMT has all along claimed that there are no ethnic issues in Taiwan, because even Aborigines are part of the zhonghua minzu, the Chinese people. Now, all of a sudden, it has recognized the existence of the problem.
From the past categorization of the bensheng (本省) and waisheng (外省) ethnic groups — the former referring to those who moved to Taiwan before 1949 and the latter referring to those who moved to Taiwan with the KMT after 1949 — the party is about to repeat the offense of ethnic discrimination. As the minority, the KMT leaders violated democratic procedures by carrying out its long-term authoritarian party-state rule, and treated the majority of the Taiwanese public unfairly. It was perhaps even more vicious than the discrimination against African Americans in the US.
More than six decades have passed since 1949. The ethnic sentiment among the younger generation has faded, as most young people now identify themselves as Taiwanese. The products of the past — elderly veterans and the old soldiers who relocated to Taiwan from China — are slowly fading into history. The young generation in today’s Taiwan should stay away from moral bias and work to build equal legal rights.
The KMT is whipping up a war of words by proposing an act to ban ethnic discrimination. It would be interesting to see the party define ethnic groups and discrimination in the act. Besides, it should first deal with the obvious unfair treatment inside the party, such as discrimination against KMT Legislator Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and some other bensheng party members.
James Wang is a senior journalist.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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