Siraya activists in Tainan yesterday criticized the government after the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) sent a letter that requested that the Tainan County Government not register Siraya as Aborigines.
The Siraya are a Pingpu — or “plains” — Aboriginal tribe that lived in Tainan County and parts of Chiayi and Kaohsiung counties. Some academics argue that the Makatao Pingpu of Pingtung County are a branch of the Siraya tribe.
The Siraya gradually “disappeared” because of marriage to Han migrants, but some Siraya descendants rediscovered their ethnic identity through unique local religious rituals and historic household registrations from the Japanese colonial period, which recorded each person’s ethnicity.
To help the Siraya re-establish their tribal identity, the Tainan County Government created a Siraya Aboriginal Affairs Committee last year and allowed Siraya in the county to apply to have their Aboriginal status restored at a county level.
“From January to April, more than 10,000 people filed applications based on household registrations from the Japanese colonial period,” Siraya Cultural Association chairwoman Wan Shu-chuan (萬淑娟) said.
However, the Siraya restoration campaign suffered a major setback when the MOI notified the county government on Monday that only those who belong to the 14 officially recognized Aboriginal tribes may be registered as Aborigines, Wan said.
“Before, besides checking the boxes for the 14 officially recognized tribes, you could also check the ‘other’ box when you made a household registration as an Aborigine,” she said. “But that is no longer the case as the MOI has canceled the ‘other’ box.”
Tuan Hung-kun (段洪坤), convener of the Tainan County Alliance of Siraya Communities, called the MOI a “brutal” government body that “intentionally disregards ethnic diversity.”
“We Siraya are here and we are Aborigines. It’s a simple fact,” said Wan Cheng-hsiung, another member of the Siraya Cultural Association.
The MOI issued a press release yesterday afternoon that said any issue related to Aboriginal status was under the jurisdiction of the ministry and the Council of Indigenous Peoples.
“Local governments and household registration offices should not register anyone as an Aborigine without approval from central government,” it said.
The Siraya activists will stage a protest outside the Executive Yuan today.
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
RSS