One often hears pet owners say: "I see my pet as a human being and a member of my family."
The essence of the remark suggests the obvious: A pet -- be it a dog, cat, rabbit or squirrel -- isn't a human being to begin with.
By the same token, when Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
It is dumbfounding to hear such an ethnically prejudiced remark from the mouth of a presidential hopeful in democratic Taiwan today, where human rights and respect and appreciation for diversity and multiculturalism are trumpeted every day.
Ma spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (
Ma's insulting remark was more than just a slip of the tongue as some, quick to leap to the pan-blue golden boy's defense, argued. It was an exposure of Ma's unconscious self that showed him to be filled with elitist chauvinism and prejudice against the nation's Aborigines.
For a long time under KMT rule, Aboriginal cultures were suppressed, if not wiped out completely. In recent years, the country's Aborigines have slowly regained their sense of self-esteem and cultural pride, and the last thing they need is prejudiced comments from a potential future national leader.
Ma was also quoted as saying at the same venue that: "If you come into the city, you have to play by its rules."
Obviously Ma didn't realize that the Aborigines were in Taiwan long before he was. What right does he have to say to the Aborigines: "If you come into the city, you have to play by its rules"?
James Watson, the Nobel prize-winning biologist and DNA pioneer, apologized and stepped down from his position at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in October over offensive comments he made about the intelligence of Africans.
Ma has offered no such apology.
It is sad to see that, as of yesterday, when the news broke, no Aboriginal representatives had come forward to challenge Ma and defend Aboriginal dignity. The Council of Indigenous People -- supposedly the nation's highest body looking after Aborigines' rights and well-being -- uttered not a single word of condemnation, nor have we heard any demand of an apology by Ma from Aboriginal lawmakers such as Independent Legislator May Chin (
When the Aborigines and their representatives fail to stand up and demand due respect for their brothers and sisters, how then can they expect people like Ma to show them respect and teach people what appreciation for diversity means?
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
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