226 Montreal Protest Site Shut Down?

Interesting. Sounds like they are trying to shut things down on the 226 Protest against the Montreal Gazette page. I wonder why? There is an adequate English translation below but I translate the Chinese as:

While the article that was published was obviously unfair, it was one person's personal experiences.  Such expressions of emotion and personal speculations serve only to obscure the original intentions of this group and may lead to unwanted effects for those Taiwanese and Canadians who love Taiwan. 

 Here's the full posting from one of the admins:

感謝各位朋友們對台灣的支持。推廣台灣的正面形象是身為台灣人的使命，我們在當地的蒙特婁台灣人將會繼續在當地媒體投書，為我們所愛的台灣發聲。 

報上所刊登的這篇文章雖然明顯地有失公正，但屬於個案。因此情緒化的言論與個人揣測只會模糊本事件的焦點，可能造成對其他熱愛台灣的台灣人與加拿大人一些不必要的影響。

基於尊重正確的事件傳播以及避免事件被過度放大，此論壇將關閉。 請將您寶貴的意見寄到: gazettebias226@yahoo.ca
再次，萬分地感謝大家對台灣的熱情及擁護 !!

I’d like to thank all ours friends for supporting Taiwan. Promoting the great images of Taiwan is what every Taiwanese supposed to do. As Montrealers from Taiwan, we will keep doing our best to be the voice for the country we love. 

What the newspaper published in this article may not be impartial but was only one person's personal perceptions. Therefore, our emotional speeches and personal speculation will only vague the focus of the event, and may cause some unnecessary effect toward the other Taiwanese and Canadians who love Taiwan. 

Based on respect for the proper event propagation and to avoid the event is over enlarged, therefore, this discussion group will be closed. If you have any valuable opinion, please email to: gazettebias226@yahoo.ca

Thanks again for your warm supports and your love to Taiwan !!

UPDATE: (About 10:30AM EST) There has been clarification from another admin that the group has temporarily "closed the comment function" but asks for continued support through invitations to the group. (About 12:30 EST) Post seems to be removed.

UPDATE 2:  (About Monday 7:00 AM EST) Seems like comments are still open but posting new items is disabled. (?) Old posts are being brought to the top when members comment.

UPDATE 3: (About Monday 1:30PM) Admin has removed all members and made it clear that the group is closing.

The Saga Continues...

Michael Turton mentioned this blog's post on the Lindsey Craig fiasco and the '226 protests' that cropped up. Flattered.  The comments were good and all in all, I felt that something good got done.  Here's the comments I posted to his blog:

I have to agree with Michael—great comments on this post.   Whether people agree or disagree, there is much more balanced discussion here than anywhere else on the net.  My faith in humanity has been restored after reading the comments today!

The only reason I blogged about this in the first place was that issues of ‘returnees’ is an interesting one. As Michael said, this is a rarely heard from group, be it Chinese/Taiwanese from other parts of the world or ‘foreigners’ from Taiwan.  

In trying to understand the reason for such a backlash like the protest, did anyone look at the translation on the 226 protest site?  I think it ‘amps up’ a lot of Ms. Craig’s points and exaggerates bias.  I have to say if I relied only on that translation I might be a lot more angry as well.  

Also, if Trevor from Cornwall sees the intent from the article to push these ESL schools in Montreal, we should ask the same question about the intent of the Montreal 226 protest as well.  That their organizers could benefit from such solidarity perhaps might outweigh the reason for the protest itself. (See my comments re: the (legitimate) W5 protest and the creation of the Chinese Canadian National Council) 

Conspiracy theories aside, I agree with a number of other comments on here:  Ms. Craig’s article is (and originally was) a blog post.  It must have been a slow news day and it got pasted to the front page of the community section in Montreal during the weekend.  Now it’s receiving an inordinate amount of backlash from people with nationalist (over)sensitivities and politically correct agendas.

Another very in-depth look at the female perspective was published by Jenna at Lao Ren Cha (老人茶). A very good account--hopefully she won't suffer her own protest. The Gazette should have picked up her story instead.


LWB


UPDATE: Of all the comments I have read on this, one blogger named Julian seemed to hit the nail on the head quite well regarding Ms. Craig's article.  Generally, he had little to complain about in terms of the smells, bugs and road signs. Agreed.  However it was the negative work environments (which I hope to write more about), immigration and crazy bureaucracy that would have been much more worthwhile to bring to the attention of the Gazette's readers.  One can only speculate if the same backlash and protest would have ensued.  (I think it would have.)  I've posted his comment here as it brings things to a close for me, about the article at least:

When I move back home to Canada after 4.5 years here in Kaohsiung and Taipei, 90% of my memories about TW will be good ones. Any complaints I have won't be about smells or chinese or cockroaches, they'll be about shitty work environments, crazy bureaucracy, and bosses that fired me after I tried to legally quit and find a way to make an orderly transition between jobs. 

I think the reason people are so eager to rip on her is that her complaints seem so silly to people who have lived here for years. Road signs, really? It'd be like a Taiwanese person moving to Montreal and being shocked at a few inches of snow. Plenty of people have had horror stories about dealing with bosses or police or immigration here, her complaints are just..... wimpy.

If you can't say something nice...

Lynch mobs, I mean... protest groups have now taken up the cause against Lindsey Craig's article on her cultural shock during her time in Taiwan. A "226 protest of media bias Gazette in Montreal” has been set up on Facebook "calling on foreign nationals living in Taiwan teaching foreign languages to contact the group to lodge a protest against the newspaper."  I wonder what kind of response they will get.   Apparently this has become a big news item in Taiwan (as anything slightly anti-Taiwanese does.) Here's the story in the Taipei Times.

I wish we could have a response like this when similar things come up in the Taiwan press. Take for example this story exposing a love affair gone wrong between an AIT worker and a local Taiwanese woman.  The original story is in Chinese but there is analysis by Michael Turton in English, the blog I found the story on.  As he points out the newspaper also ran editorials with 'experts' who made statements such as '90% of foreigners in Taiwan are losers.'  Kind of a double standard, don't you think?  There is further follow up by Turton here.

I remember at the time saying to someone when I read these articles.  "If this kind of stuff was done in Canada there would be a huge protest."  Well, the 226 Facebook group is here. Told ya so...  I wish them all the luck in their protests--of course, for 'foreigners' living in Taiwan, it is against the law to protest (you can't become a citizen) so we'll just have to put up with the situation for now.

CORRECTION:  Thanks to Steven who pointed out that, yes, you can become a citizen--I personally only know of two 'westerners' who had to really fight for special circumstances.  I should have written 'almost impossible' when compared with Canada and other countries (which was my point).