[Editorial] The need for anti-discrimination legislation

Posted on : 2013-04-22 16:05 KST Modified on : 2013-04-22 16:05 KST

The revised anti-discrimination bill that had been proposed by Democratic United Party (DUP) lawmakers Kim Han-gil and Choi Won-sik has been withdrawn.

The two lawmakers circulated an explanation of the withdrawal to the other lawmakers who had been supporting it.

“This was not a matter of misunderstanding the intent of the anti-discrimination bill. Rather, the intent of the bill was willfully distorted and misrepresented,” the document said. “The resulting atmosphere was not one in which reasonable and rational debate could take place. The bill has been bashed as praising North Korean juche ideology and trying to legalize homosexuality. We have even been labeled as pro-North, gay lawmakers.”

Facing a severe backlash and an onslaught of complaints about the anti-discrimination bill from certain conservative Christian organizations, the two lawmakers in effect raised the white flag of surrender.

The controversy over the anti-discrimination bill all too clearly demonstrates the backward state of human rights in Korea and illustrates just how far we have still to go.

If passed, the bill would have banned all unreasonable discrimination based on gender, disability, medical history, age, language, nationality, ethnicity, physical conditions including skin color, religion, ideology and political orientation, sexual orientation, educational background, and employment status.

Some conservative Christian organizations claimed that, if the law were passed, schools would be unable to punish people who taught homosexual sexual activity or who praised North Korea. In addition to phone calls and emails, these organizations even threatened to campaign to have the lawmakers behind the bill removed from office in the next election.

The claims being made by the conservative Christian establishment are anachronistic. The anti-discrimination bill was an attempt to improve the present reality in which even basic human rights are being trampled upon, such as when people are let go from their jobs because of their sexual orientation. It was not an attempt to promote any particular sexual orientation.

 

Freedom of thought is an innate human right.

 

Attitudes in South Korean society must change so that people view members of minority groups not as strangers but rather as their own family members, sympathize with the pain and discrimination that they face, and take care of them. Only then will Korea be regarded as a champion of human rights. It is extremely troubling that some conservative Christian groups actually appear to be fomenting and spreading discrimination against and hatred for these minority groups.

Though the bill is critical, it would have been better not to propose it at all than to propose it and then withdraw it, as the two DUP lawmakers did. The bill that was proposed by two had been signed by nearly half of the lawmakers within the DUP, South Korea’s largest opposition party. The largest opposition party abandoned its duty to advocate human rights due to irrational popular backlash. The lawmakers should either have given more thought to the bill before they proposed it, or should have been more tenacious about pushing it through once they had proposed it.

The anti-discrimination bill was also one of the 140 government tasks defined by South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s Presidential Transition Committee. The United Nations Human Rights Council recommends that all countries pass comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation, and most advanced countries have done so.

Now is the time for the government to step forward and enlist the aid of people from various sectors to see to it that the anti-discrimination legislation is passed. It is hoped that government officials and politicians on both sides of the aisle will work together to keep South Korea from being branded as a backwater of human rights and to help it move forward as an advanced country.

 

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

 

button that move to original korean article (클릭시 원문으로 이동하는 버튼)

Most viewed articles