Taiwan Citizen Front (台灣公民陣線) and language rights advocates held a protest on Monday to condemn two Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers for what they called discriminatory actions against Hakka speakers.
Advocates from several organizations promoting Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), Hakka and indigenous languages protested against KMT legislators Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩) and Hung Mong-kai (洪孟楷) outside the legislature in Taipei, saying their actions during a meeting of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee last week were inappropriate.
Hsu convened the session to deliberate on the Ministry of Education’s Hoklo policies, and Hakka Affairs Council Minister Ku Hsiu-fei (古秀妃) addressed the proceeding in Hakka.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
“Ku responded to Hung’s questions in Hakka, then Hung told her that he does not understand Hakka. He refused to put on the headphones which would provide him with simultaneous translation. Then Hsu, as the session convener, told Ku to only speak in Mandarin Chinese,” Taiwan Citizen Front member Lo Yi (羅宜) said.
Lo and other advocates accused the KMT legislators of “language discrimination” and preventing Ku from speaking her mother tongue.
“It was a deliberate act to insult speakers of other languages, denying their right to not use Mandarin Chinese. In doing so, the KMT legislators are attempting to suppress Taiwan’s local languages,” Lo said.
Through the many decades of authoritarian one-party rule under Martial Law, the then-KMT regime imposed a policy of “Mandarin Chinese only” on all citizens, Lo said.
The then-KMT regime levied fines and made students carry humiliating signs when they spoke other local languages in school to punish them, Lo said.
Only over the past few years have there been efforts to elevate the status of Taiwan’s local languages, and the passage of the Development of National Languages Act (國家語言發展法) granted equal status to all “natural languages” used by ethnic groups in Taiwan, he said.
The act gave these languages’ speakers the right to use them freely, he said.
The KMT lawmakers are contravening the laws on Taiwan’s local languages, he said.
The lawmakers have adopted the past authoritarian government’s arrogance and elitist and discriminatory mindset, attacking members of other ethnic groups for speaking their mother tongues, he said.
“As a Hakka person, I was very disappointed to see the KMT legislators demanding that Ku not speak Hakka and answer the questions in Mandarin Chinese,” Kiu-Pit Studio director Lin Chun-ching (林裙靜) said. “Hsu also has a Hakka background, and it is unbelievable that she told Ku not to speak the language.”
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