Offensive and inappropriate speech directed at minority groups should be penalized to further racial and social equality, a panel of academics and activists said yesterday at a Legislative Yuan hearing on anti-discrimination legislation.
The hearing, called by New Power Party (NPP) legislators, followed controversy over the portrayal of Aborigines in the film David Loman 2 (大尾鱸鰻2), which featured a protagonist speaking gibberish to Tao protesters from Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼).
NPP Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) said that new requirements were necessary to combat widespread inaccurate portrayals of Aboriginal culture, even by government ministries.
“As an artist, I can understand the concern of [David Loman 2] director Chiu [Li-kwan (邱?寬)] and others in the music and film world that new requirements might restrict artistic freedom, but I feel people should think deeper: You cannot randomly sample the work of others in the name of artistic freedom,” said Lim, who previously served as the lead singer for the heavy metal band Chthonic (閃靈).
Chris Huang (黃居正), an associate professor in National Tsing Hua University’s Institute of Law for Science and Technology, said the cultures of minority groups belong to the group members themselves rather than mainstream society, which should make them off limits for mainstream satire and spoofs.
Hu Po-yen (胡博硯), an associate professor of law at Soochow University, said that misappropriation of cultural symbols is currently impossible to prosecute because of legal loopholes.
“There is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech — when it comes into conflict with personality rights (人格權) [governing the commercial usage of names and likenesses], we protect personality rights and allow the affected person to sue. However, minority groups are not eligible to bring suits against discriminatory or humiliating words or behavior directed at them,” he said.
Soochow University Department of Indigenous Affairs and Ethno-Development professor Shih Cheng-feng (施正鋒) said the law should penalize speech and behavior that makes others uncomfortable, rather than only when there was an “intention” to discriminate.
Without a focus on the objective harm caused by such speech, offenders would always be able to avoid culpability by denying any intention to offend, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching