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I don't understand why people on this forum ask absolute questions like this.
There is no single Country on Earth thats the ''most tolerant'' some Countries are more tolerant in some aspects than others.
For example Britain may be very tolerant to gay people but arguably if you are of African descent you may have the view the UK is very intolerant of your heritage for many reasons. Another example is a religious person in liberal Sweden may want to preach his religion in the street but may get scorned for doing so by the overly ''liberal'' Swedes.
Liberalism in itself isn't ''tolerant'' either its all subjective and many liberal people are accused of being covertly racist and anti-religious to the point of spite. A lot of Western societies in my view are very intolerant of anything spiritual to the point of squeezing out anything that doesn't seem rational, we look down on societies that hold strong ''superstitions'' and religious beliefs - isn't that very intolerant in itself or ''progressive''
Now I'm not stating that the West (including Britain) are horribly places to live but I wouldn't jump the gun and say all the least tolerant countries are what most would expect; India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq & Somalia. Because for one I haven't been there to experience the culture and to say those Countries are least tolerant would be to say that Western Countries are tolerant in all aspects.
What I'm trying to convey is that one country may excel in tolerance of subject A but may lack tolerance in subject B.
Take this - The Caribbean and South/Central America which hold annual Carnivals where people get drunk, dance provocatively, Women dressed in little clothing for the costumes. Is that an example of a tolerant society?
Korea and Japan disliking each other doesn't make them racist, xenophobic, neonazis.
All neighboring countries hate each other for historic reasons. Even your favorite scandinavian ones have feuds, Spain-Italy has one, the Balkans...
You can't judge country by its relations with neighboors.
What I said has nothing to deal with neighbouring feuds. Besides, the feuds between Korea and Japan (and other countries in the region) cannot be compared to some stupid internet memes of Nordic countries or Spain and Italy. It's not a rivalry, it's deep hatred.
I just don't think you understand the situation here at all. Discrimination against foreigners is of epic magnitude here. White people may not experience the most blatant form of those (though if they stayed long enough, they would eventually realise it), but black people have it rough, SE Asians have it even worse.
.... Those first years in Hong Kong were beautiful and easy.
But eventually my conscience began to gnaw at me. At work, invisible walls divided colleagues by skin color. White managers who had worked all their lives in Asia sometimes looked surprised when I spoke up in perfect English to volunteer my opinion — a small thing, but revealing. A few seats away from my desk sat Filipino colleagues, often ignored or greeted with terse, awkward smiles when they tried to make conversation. I saw a Pakistani colleague of mine held at arm’s length during team happy hours, lonesome with his glass of wine while his colleagues buzzed around him. A Sri Lankan friend of mine working in investment banking cried when she was passed over for a raise once again.
The city’s thorny relationship with race was even more obvious outside of work. I remember dining with an Indian companion and being thoroughly ignored by the waitstaff, even beyond the standards of usually brusque Hong Kong service. Locals regularly complained to me about being paid less than their expat counterparts. And on the streets, images of hapa women, men, and babies — half white, half Asian — were featured prominently on billboard ads, the city’s aspiration to whiteness hiding in plain sight.
Hong Kong is also home to hundreds of thousands of Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers — 320,000, as of 2013. On Sundays, their day off, Hong Kong’s otherwise mostly hidden domestic helpers swarm public parks, much to the chagrin of locals who I’d hear complain of what they saw as their parks being “overrun.” Workers who have served Hong Kong families loyally for decades cannot become permanent residents, dependent instead on a work visa that could be stripped from them at any moment. The 2016 Global Slavery Index — compiled by the Australia-based nonprofit Walk Free Foundation, which tracks government action on forced labor, human trafficking, and other conditions of modern slavery — ranked Hong Kong’s government in the bottom 5 percent worldwide. Reports surface regularly about domestic workers being beaten or sexually abused by their employers. These people served me cocktails, cooked the food I ate, bussed my plates without a sound, painted my nails, massaged me, and cleaned my apartment. “That’s just capitalism,” my erudite friends would say, but I couldn’t shake the truth that my privilege floated on cheap Southeast Asian labor and the diminished social position they occupied.
NUMBERING MORE THAN 600,000, migrant factory workers, domestic caregivers and helpers, and fishermen make up a substantial portion of the workforce in Taiwan, which has a population of 23.5 million. Yet these workers from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines are not afforded the same level of protection under the law as their Taiwanese counterparts.
Migrant workers who are employed on fishing vessels operating in international waters, for example, and the hundreds of thousands of Filipino domestic helpers on the island are not covered by the Labour Standards Act – the laws governing employer and employee rights – and consequently do not benefit from Taiwan’s minimum-wage regulations or stipulations regarding overtime pay and regular days off. They are thus vulnerable to exploitation.
....
According to Taiwanese law, a migrant worker who absconds from their job can be declared a runaway after three days. Once these so-called runaways are caught by the authorities, they are subject to deportation. Their broker may then attempt to invoke penalty clauses in their contracts, illegal under Taiwanese law yet still widely included, based on their failure to complete a three-year term of service.
Brokers have been known to use their knowledge of a worker’s home address in the Philippines to make thinly veiled threats of retaliation against them or their family should the worker balk at paying.
Several caregivers and helpers have also spoken of a lack of privacy within their employer’s home, and the many extra contractual responsibilities they have had to shoulder.
Of all the stories of hardship, few are more shocking than that of Annie. During her two years and five months working in Taiwan, Annie – 33 years old at the time of her interview in March and hailing from Manila, the helper wishes to be identified by a pseudonym – had five employers. All, she alleges, victimised her sexually.
There are tons of stories like these. Don't even get me started on discrimination against women. You're seriously on drugs if you think East Asia is tolerant or liberal. It's anything but that.
Is legislated tolerance really tolerance on a personal level?
Yes on a personal level. That poll I quoted in an earlier post abut 85 percent of Canadians have no issue voting for a gay leader, it's 63 percent in the US.
I agree you can't legislate out ignorance, but you can make clear to those with more than two brains cells to rub together, that people deserve equal rights. They may not like it, but those dinosaurs die off eventually.
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