Taiwan Church News
3408 Edition
19 – 25 June, 2017
Topical News Civic Groups Urge Taiwan Government To Establish Public Hoklo TV Rported by Chiu Kuo-rong In the afternoon on June 18, representatives from over 10 civic groups, including Suan-Lien Presbyterian Church of Chi-Hsin Presbytery, held a joint press conference, entitled as “No more wait! We want a public Hoklo TV”, at Chung-shing building of Legislative Yuan. In the press conference, Ms Chen Fong-huei, chief executive of Li Kang Khiok Taiwanese Culture & EducationFoundation and an Taiwanese specialist of PCT’s Promote Taiwan’s Mother Tongues Committee, expressed that itis plainly ridiculous to stop setting up a public Hoklo TV just because over 80% of the population were deemed asTaiwanese-speaking populace. Based on a report, relased by Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Executive Yuan in May 2013, Mr Ho Tsung-hsun, chairman of Taiwan Citizen Participation Association, questioned why the governmentgranted so little budget(NT$ 50 million in 2013) to let so low-grade officers, the 4th unit of Lifelong Educationdepartment under Ministry of Education, to look after the development of Hoklo language with 81.9% populace? In comparison, accoding to Ho, the Councl of Indigenous Peoples governing only 1.4% populace, yet shared a NT$7.6 billion budget and owned an aboriginal TV, which were clearly assured in The Indigenous Peoples Basic Lawand Aboriginal Languages Developmental Acts. In addition, Hakka Affairs Council governing 6.6% populace, butreceived a NT$ 2.88 billion budget and established a Hakka TV under the guidance of Hakka Basic Act. According to UNESCO, any human language would risk to its extinction if not kept being used or applied in theprogress of time, Chen said, adding that the status quo of Taiwanese was just trapped in an emergent crisis ofextinction: Hoklo grandpa and grandma could no more communicate with their grandchildren in Taiwanese; theycould only exchange in an awkward and not so fluent Chinese. This unfortunate chaos and problems of Hoklo languagecrisis were all originated from the biased and discriminating language policy: raising Chinese over other ethic languages, Chen remarked. Translated by Peter Wolfe |