Chinese discrimination

Taken from: http://fredshannon.blogspot.com/2005/10/filipinos-teaching-english-in-taiwan.html

Filipinos Teaching English in Taiwan

The Philippine Ministry of Labour and Employment has suggested that Filipinos be permitted to teach English in Taiwan.

Filipinos to Teach English in Taiwan

The Taiwan Ministry of Education (MOE) has indicated that it will soon start a recruiting drive for qualified English instructors. Admittedly, there is a shortage of qualified and experienced English teachers in Taiwan (and in other countries within the region) and this move would make perfect sense.

However, the MOE has stated that it will only pay Filipino instructors $25,000 NT, almost half of what teachers from Canada, Australia, U.S. and U.K. make under the same program.

My position on this is that qualified Filipino English instructors should receive the same pay and benefits as their colleagues from Canada, Australia, U.S. and the U.K. if they are to be contracted for the same amount of hours and duties as the native speaking instructors.

Furthermore, I agree that there should be more opportunities for qualified Filipino and Indian instructors who have native-like proficiency in English.

Indeed, it seems wrong to allow access to English teaching positions in Taiwan purely on the basis of where individual applicants were born or the kind of passport they hold.

For instance, there are French Canadians in Taiwan teaching English, some at the university level, in fact, who are not native English speakers. However, they hold Canadian passports, thus, making them eligible to teach English in Taiwan.

The current MOE policies are based on race and they must be ammended so as not to exclude other English speaking applicants from non-English-speaking countries.

Asian Racism: Nobel Peace prize winner speaks out

Here we have a nobel peace prize winner speaking out against asian racism.

Nobel Peace Laureate denounces Asian racism

By Jonathan Manthorpe, in the Ottawa Citizen,
15 January, 1997

HONG KONG -- Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta says many Asian governments are hypocritical and more racist than the western nations they criticize.

Ramos-Horta singled out racism in China, Malaysia and Indonesia during a speech Tuesday to the Foreign Correspondents' Club here following criticism in the region of race relations in Australia.

"If you compare Australia with Malaysia, Indonesia or China, Australia is the most tolerant country in the region," the East Timorese activist said. "Several regimes in Asia are more color- sensitive than Australia. I get incensed when hypocrites from this region criticize Australia for racism. They should learn from Australia."

Australia has come in for criticism recently after independent legislator Pauline Hanson called for limits to Asian immigration. But Ramos-Horta, while admitting he has had some problems in Australia in the past because of his color, said the country has "made enormous efforts over the years to become really multicultural."

"Chinese are not discriminated against in Australia, as they have been in Malaysia," he said. "Chinese do not become scapegoats and get killed, their shops, their homes burned down every time there is a political problem, or economic, as happens in Indonesia."

Ramos-Horta has spent more than 20 years in exile in Australia from his home in East Timor, which was occupied by Indonesia in 1975. Together with Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo, Ramos-Horta was awarded the Nobel Prize last year for working for the expulsion of Indonesia from the territory.

But Ramos-Horta said United Nations-sponsored negotiations on the future of East Timor are "a farce" because of Indonesia's refusal to accept a referendum on its occupation.

Nine rounds of discussions between Indonesia and Portugal, the former colonial power that is still recognized as the sovereign authority by the UN, have produced nothing, he said.

More than 200,000 people, perhaps as many as 300,000, are estimated to have died in East Timor as a result of military repression, famine and epidemics spurred by Indonesia's occupation.

Ramos-Horta said he hopes the UN's new secretary-general, Kofi Annan, will give the issue more attention than in the past. But he said he does not believe East Timor will regain its independence until the military-backed regime of Indonesian President Suharto is replaced by a democracy.

Ramos-Horta took indirect aim at the concept of "Asian values," which many regional leaders invoke to say western notions of democracy and human rights are not appropriate.

Ramos-Horta said he believed imprisoned Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, serving 14 years for advocating political reform, would win last year's Nobel Prize.

"I submit the Chinese must release Wei, must release its prisoners. How can a country with a history of achievements like China silence its best people? How can a great country fear the discussion of ideas?"

Southam News

Racism in the West

Interesting article.... Australia, often labelled by Asian as 'racist' only has 4.5% of people not wanting people of another 'race' next door. I wonder how this compares to Japan, Singapore and Malaysia?

Not all love their neighbours: survey

Almost one in four Australians don't want homosexuals as neighbours, an international survey has found.

Australians are less bigoted on the subject than people in Northern Ireland, said John Mangan, professor of economics at the University of Queensland.

Prof Mangan is co-author of a paper interpreting statistics from the Human Beliefs and Values Survey, conducted in 24 Western countries between 1999 and 2002.

He said the results showed anti-gay prejudice was by no means confined to Australia.

"The conclusion is the most prevalent form of bigotry is homophobia," he said.

"It's everybody except Scandinavians, so it's not a particularly Australian thing."

Of the 2,048 people sampled by phone in Australia, 24.7 per cent said they did not want homosexuals living next door.

But the figure was exceeded by survey respondents in Austria (26.7 per cent), Greece (26.8), the Republic of Ireland (27.5) Italy (28.7) and Portugal (25.6).

And Northern Ireland came out on top, with 36 per cent saying they did not want gay neighbours.

The least prejudiced nationality in the survey was Sweden, where only six per cent said they would object.

Australia fared relatively well in other categories, with only 4.6 per cent of people saying they would not like people of a different race as neighbours and 4.5 per cent objecting to immigrants or foreign workers next door.

Italians, on 15.6 per cent, topped the list of those who didn't want a different race next door.

The Northern Irish held the strongest views on immigrants and foreign workers, with 19 per cent saying they were not desirable neighbours.

Prof Mangan said the reasons why the various national attitudes evolved would be the subject of further research.

Factors influencing bigotry included income levels, whether people were employed or not, education levels and political leanings.

"Tolerance seems to rise with education more than anything else," Prof Mangan said.

"But you can have quite wealthy people who are older and probably have less formal education who tend to have more fixed beliefs."

His research has been published recently in the international economics journal, Kyklos.

The paper, entitled Love Thy Neighbour: How Much Bigotry is there in Western Countries, was co-authored by Professor Vani Borooah of the University of Ulster.