The government must take steps to legally preserve the diversity of Taiwan's multicultural society while simultaneously working toward ethnic reconciliation, said academics and experts at the Ethnic and Cultural Development Conference yesterday.
Future policies should legalize the use and establish the importance of local languages, seek to accurately reflect a multicultural Taiwanese identity and avoid the assimilation-focused policies of the past, they said.
Over 200 participants gathered to talk with academics and political figures in the National Central Library on the first day of the three-day conference sponsored by the Council for Cultural Affairs, Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP), Council for Hakka Affairs, the Ministry of Education and the Veterans Affairs Commission.
In his opening remarks to the conference, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) urged people to forget the mistakes of the past and focus on the future.
He called for mutual acceptance and understanding between ethnic groups in order to work together for a more prosperous Taiwan.
"The ethnic conflict and racism that exists in Taiwanese society comes mainly from the political oppression of the past half century, mistaken ethnic assimilation policies, and unrealistic conditions for a national identity -- not from conflict and biases between ethnic groups," Chen said.
Focus on law
A focus of the conference yesterday was a draft law making all the languages used by ethnic groups in Taiwan national languages.
The proposed national languages development law would guarantee equal respect for all Taiwan-ese tongues, such as Hakka, Hoklo and all Aboriginal languages, Chen said.
The law, emphasized Chen, would not demand that everyone learn all national languages and would establish Mandarin as the official language to be used in government and administrative proceedings, said Chen.
Legal recognition of each dia-lect's status is important, Chen said, because without such recognition "there would still be a long way to go towards ethnic reconciliation."
Chen called on the conference participants to think of a framework for including a promised chapter on ethnic affairs in Chen's proposed new constitution.
In response to Chen's call, conference speakers talked about ways to guarantee ethnic rights and develop local cultures and languages yesterday.
To preserve Aboriginal cultures, the government should draft legislation promising Aboriginal peoples that it will never enact assimilation or ethnic cleansing policies, said Yohani Isqaqavut (
As a further proof of its commitment, the government should recognize the Pingpu people (
Several speakers emphasized the importance of Chen's national languages law as well, pointing out that many minority dialects are dying out.
Dialects dying out
"Although 77 percent of the ethnic Hoklo speak Hoklo at home, about 20 percent speak Mandarin in the home. For the Hakka, the percentage of people speaking Mandarin at home [41] exceeds that of those speaking Hakka [31], and we don't even need to talk about the huge number of Aboriginals that do not speak their native tongue in the home," said Peter Tuin (張學謙), a professor at National Taitung University.
Speakers called for the discontinuation of the term "Taiwanese" as a reference to the Hoklo dialect.
"All Taiwan's languages should be called `Taiwanese,'" said Council of Hakka Affairs Chairman Lo Chao-jin (
Aside from minority representatives speaking at the conference, audience members also spoke up and called for the establishment of a Hoklo cultural council akin to the Council of Hakka Affairs and the CIP.
"Even though the Hoklo people are the majority in Taiwan, that doesn't mean that Hoklo culture and language shouldn't be protected and promoted," said Wei Ming-te (
The Hoklo people and language were also repressed under the KMT government's assimilation policies of the past 50 years, Wei pointed out, a fact that was echoed by numerous other audience members and speakers such as keynote speaker Stephane Corcuff, a visiting scholar at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research.
Search for identity
During his remarks, Corcuff linked Taiwan's cultural debate to its people's continuing struggle with Taiwan's national identity by examining the history behind cross-strait relations.
The connection between one's ethnic group and view of Taiwan's identity as either an independent country or part of a "Republic of China" stems from the arrival of Chiang Kai-hek (
At the time, given the struggle for recognition that both Chiang and the ROC government was facing domestically and internationally, the KMT began to deepen Chinese aspects of Taiwan society and rewrite Taiwanese history, he said.
New consciousness needed
As a result, Taiwanese people have developed differing collective consciousnesses over the course of the past 50 years, Corcuff said.
"If Taiwan wants to keep its ability to preserve civil peace in a future that will probably be more and more tense, it must start right now to imagine a mode of national identification based on citizen's consciousness and to invent a new culture of national allegiance," Corcuff said.
Yesterday's conference sessions were part of the Council of Cultural Affairs' Multicultural Citizens' Festival this weekend.
To learn more about festival events, see the event's Web page at www.cca.gov.tw/cforum/culture_citizen/p2.html.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS