Many people in Taiwan are upset about a video that Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik made and posted on the Internet before going on his killing spree in Oslo, in which he expresses his admiration for Taiwan as a “modern country that never adopted multiculturalism.”
Many people have responded to Breivik’s assertion by saying that Taiwan is, on the contrary, a country that respects pluralistic culture.
I expressed my opinions on this subject in an article published in the Chinese-language China Times on July 29, an English version of which also appeared in the Taipei Times (“Does Taiwan genuinely respect plurality?” Aug. 4, page 8). In the article, I pointed out that although Taiwan has never seen a massacre of people from an ethnic minority or migrants by right-wing extremists, our laws, policies and systems are full of discrimination against immigrants and migrant workers.
Discriminatory attitudes are often seen in the words and actions of bureaucrats, while prejudice is pervasive in society at large. The article called upon Taiwanese who really want to refute Breivik’s description of Taiwan as a monocultural society to say a resounding “no” to all words and actions that discriminate against immigrants and migrant workers. If Taiwan does that, the nation can make it clear that it refuses to endorse right-wing ideology.
On Aug. 4, I received an anonymous letter containing a photocopy of a full-page report about Breivik that appeared on page A6 of the Chinese-language Apple Daily on July 25. The report includes a photograph of Breivik wearing a special forces diving suit and aiming a rifle at some imaginary adversary. In the blank space alongside the photograph, the anonymous letter-writer had scribbled the following shocking and hate-filled message: “When will Taiwan get a brave man like this to kill all the mangy foreign workers and trashy foreign spouses who have crawled over from Southeast Asia and other backward regions to hang around in Taiwan, along with the shameless hypocrites who wave banners and yell slogans on their behalf in the bogus name of brotherly love — people like that bloody sow Hsia Hsiao-chuan? Because of this trash and because of you, our descendants will have to live in a trash heap!”
This letter is not just an isolated, random incident. I have received several threatening letters over the past year, and other people and organizations that speak up for the rights of immigrants and migrant workers have also received such letters or been harassed in various ways. When you take that into account, is Taiwan really as far removed from what happened in Norway as people imagine?
In an attempt to show how determined Taiwan is to protect human rights, the government ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2009 and enacted a law on their implementation.
Article 8 of the implementation act reads as follows: “All levels of governmental institutions and agencies should review laws, regulations, directions and administrative measures within their functions according to the two covenants. All laws, regulations, directions and administrative measures incompatible to the two covenants should be amended within two years after the act enters into force by new laws, law amendments, law abolitions and improved administrative measures.”
Because the act came into force in December 2009, the deadline for these measures to be taken is Dec. 10 this year.
Article 20, Paragraph 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says: “Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”
The anonymous letter I received surely fits this description, but Taiwan has no law that could be used to enforce this clause of the covenant.
There are some laws that one might think could be applied in this case, such as those concerning slander, threats and public insults, as well as Article 62 of the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法), but, generally speaking, unless there is a substantial, direct and face-to-face threat, it is hard to establish an offense under these laws.
For example, at the beginning of last year, some migrants’ rights groups lodged a complaint of discrimination with the National Immigration Agency about an incident in which a high school teacher insulted a female student whose mother was from Indonesia, calling her a “savage” and telling her to “go back to Indonesia.”
Their complaint was based on Article 62 of the Immigration Act, which reads: “Any person shall not discriminate against people residing in the Taiwan Area on the basis of nationality, race, color, class or place of birth.”
However, the agency rejected the complaint on the grounds that those who lodged it were not directly involved in the incident.
Government departments at all levels are making a big show of reviewing various laws and regulations to ensure that they comply with the terms of the two human rights covenants, and proposing amendments or draft laws accordingly. Regrettably, we have yet to see the departments concerned propose substantial amendments or new legislation in response to the requirements of Article 20, Paragraph 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Let us hope we won’t have to wait much longer before the necessary changes are made. The massacre in Norway should serve as a wake-up call and government departments in Taiwan would be ill-advised to ignore it.
Hsia Hsiao-chuan is a professor and director of the Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies at Shih Hsin University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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