While the ethnic issue has long been a factor in the country, careless reporting by the media sometimes helps fire it up, participants said at a forum on ethnic relations and media reform in Taipei yesterday.
“Ethnic harmony seems to be the mainstream value, however, when some politicians and media advocate ‘ethnic harmony’ and condemn people for ‘stirring up tensions between ethnic groups,’ they are actually the ones who are making things worse,” Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中), a long-time social activist, told the forum held by the Association of Taiwan Journalists (ATJ).
“For example, when someone says something about the 228 Incident, or criticizes [dictator] Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石], some politicians and media would not hesitate to call on that person not to ‘stir up ethnic tensions,’” Yang said. “I don’t understand what those two topics have to do with ‘ethic tension.’”
The 228 Incident refers to an uprising by Taiwanese against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime in 1947, to which the KMT responded with a violent crackdown.
As most members of the KMT government and military at the time were from China, and most of the victims were locals, some consider it as an ethnic clash.
Chiang is admired by many of the Chinese who fled to Taiwan after the KMT lost the civil war to the Chinese Communist Party. Even today, many see him as a symbol for Chinese migrants and their refugees.
Yang, who is a descendent of Chinese migrants, does not think so.
“The 228 Incident was repression of a people by an authoritarian regime, when Chiang was dictator,” he said. “You can’t just automatically associate a certain ethnic group with Chiang.”
Lushell Chien (簡竹書), an ATJ member, said the media could be the main source of discrimination against immigrant spouses from Southeast Asia in the society.
Chien cited a story published in the Chinese-language United Daily News on Aug. 10 last year as an example. The report was about the deportation of Vietnamese women who worked illegally in the country.
The reporter wrote in the last paragraph: “These people from outside are taking over Taiwan — is the government going to continue to turn a blind eye to it?”
“I don’t know why the reporter felt he had to add that last sentence, or why it was published,” Chien said. “This is not an isolated case and that’s where we get so much discrimination in this country.”
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