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Kaohsiung high school students seen dressed as Arabs carrying machine guns
Taiwanese students dressed as Arabs. (Image from PTT)
TAIPEI (Taiwan news) -- Photos surfaced yesterday (Jan. 3) on social media of Taiwanese high school students dressed as stereotypical Muslims, wearing Arab robes and carrying toy machine guns at a school event meant to promote Muslim culture and food.
A user of the PTT Bulletin Board System on Wednesday posted images of students from a high school in Kaohsiung's Fengshan District at a school event to promote Muslim culture wearing Arab thawbs (white robes) and carrying large, toy machine guns. The PTT user complained that the students' use of fake firearms while dressed in garments certain Arabs wear would perpetuate negative stereotypes about Muslims and claimed that the they showed now signs of remorse afterwards.
The netizen then closed by saying, "These kind of people should be punished, they've reached high school, but they don't even have a basic level of decency?"
The images hark back to a similar incident in which high school students dressed in Nazi uniforms, causing a massive uproar. On Dec. 24, 2016, the Presidential Office demanded a high school apologize to Israel after pictures emerged online of its students wearing Nazi uniforms and waving swastika flags, just two days before Christmas.
The photos were reportedly taken during a school celebration at the Kuang-fu High School in Hsinchu City. They showed at least a dozen students in black uniforms with swastika armbands, several of them holding Nazi flags and symbols. There was also one student who brought the stretched-armed Nazi salute from the top of a cardboard replica of a tank.
The backlash was enormous with the German Institute Taipei and the Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei have expressing disappointment and condemnation over the Nazi, the teachers and students expressed remorse, the school's president has stepped down, and a student has written a letterdefending his actions.
Students wearing Arab thawbs and carrying toy machine guns. (PTT image) |
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