Taiwan Church News
3356 Edition
June 20 -26, 2016
Editorial
From Anti-Discrimination To Ethnic Fairness
Recently Ms Hung Su-chu has become the hottest gossip topic in Taiwan society. As a matter of fact, with an unexpected reactionary effect to stop the hate language abuse coming again, she becomes the driving force uniting all political parties together to deliver an “Against Discrimination Law”!
If we temporarily put down our personal prejudices toward some specific ethnic tribes and the related structural problems buried deep, every person living on this land deserves to be respected and treated fair. This stance is not only related to the basics of human rights, but also implied by the theological meaning of “in the the image of God the humankind was created”. Since every person owns the image of God, we have to try hard to identify and respect this special identity in each other. This is because to insult or discriminate other people is equal to doing the same things on the images of God created in them.
But, when the Anti-Discrimination Law is proposed to legalize, there are several tricks deserve a second thought. The first one is the “political manipulation” by KMT. Since the event of Hung Su-chu, KMT spoke out first to pass an “Anti-Discrimination Law” without ceasing to criticize the people advocating Taiwan independence. This is the so-called double-bladed trick: Protesting aloud in the name of no discrimination, while crushing down another group of people as the real target! No wonder people criticized this gambit as “it’s OK for high class mainlanders to discriminate against the Taiwanese, but the game is changed when the old veteran is heckled!”
In the meantime, we should not forget this event is overtly exposed by China’s media. The Chinese Communist Party thinks DPP is to be blamed on this event, but they seems to forget that Taiwan Civil Government(TCG) is the same as KMT in their unification nature: TCG wish to unify with USA, while KMT want to unify with China. Both party do not ever expect to concur the stance of all independent Taiwanese.
The “Anti-Discrimination Law” is not only a magic mirror for every political party showcasing their own ignorance, but also a double-bladed sword reflecting our inner hatred which we are reluctant to admit. The appeal of anti-discrimination does not concern the issue of ethnicity only, many other dimensions like gender, sexuality, age, education, household economics, disability and etc need to be scrutinzed to check if there is any discrimination existent? If we all agree anti-discrimination is important in our daily lives, let us reflect in our church fellowship whether everyone is treasured as the sweetheart baby before our Lord God?
Fundamentally speaking, the appeal of anti-discrimination is just a passive action intending to stop bad things happen only. Once we turn into a positive mindset of proposing ethnic fairness, things would be totally different. As the idea of ethnic fairness not only includes the basics of anti-discrimination, but also requires each involved ethnic people to understand and communicate with each other in order to build an ideal society with mutual respect, support and common prosperity.
Christian, as “the messenger of reconciliation”, should not just talk about anti-discrimination. We need to propose ethnic fairness further. From anti-discrimination to ethnic fairness, we have to break down those stereotyped dimensions, like gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, education, economics, disability and etc, existed within church for years. Let all those willing to come into church get respected; let our young men take part in the decision of church affairs; let the female believer to become deacon or elder; let the poor have their dignity and the demands of new immigrants be heard; let more friendly space be created for the disabled…. We have many things to do and much more need to act right now!
