Hakka Monthly magazine (客家風雲雜誌), published in October 1987, first put forward that Hakka people should engage in politics to change their disadvantaged situation, and at the same time demanded broadcasting in the Hakka language. On December 28 of that year, the magazine’s publishers called for Hakka people to take to the streets and launched the 1228 Hakka Language Restoration Rally, whose main demands were: a full opening to Hakka language television programming, a change to the Radio and Television Act’s Article 20 restrictions on native languages, and the establishment of an open and diverse language policy.
On December 28, 1988, more than 3,000 members of the public took part in the Hakka Language Restoration Rally to express their concerns about losing their native language and to fight for language equality. Through the struggle and persistence of these predecessors over a period of 30 years, many Hakka people hidden in society have had the courage to acknowledge their own culture. They have fought for the interests of the spiritual values of the Hakka people and to pass on the Hakka language so that the cultural inheritance of the language can continue to flourish.
This politically non-partisan Hakka Language Restoration Movement latterly became an important driving force to promote the establishment of Hakka radio broadcasting and Hakka television programs. The later establishment of the Taiwan Hakka Public Affairs Association saw Hakka people take more practical action to participate in Taiwan’s democracy movement, through the power of the political process and various electoral channels turning Hakka affairs into a focus of attention at election time, and at the same time implementing the main demands of the Hakka ethnic group.
There are around 7,000 languages in the world. Since 1970, almost 400 have been lost. Close to one in four languages faces extinction and many kinds of aboriginal culture and knowledge will be lost along with them. Taiwan is an island blessed with diverse ethnic groups, where Hakka, indigenous languages, and Minnan (Taiwanese Hokkien) have all established their own cultural vision, but it also inevitably faces the extinction crisis of minority languages. It is hoped that the Taiwanese people who live here can better understand the beauty of the minority languages the land has nurtured, can through language understand diverse cultures, and further understand and acknowledge the true meaning behind each language so the cultural inheritance of language may continue.