Led by a royal descendant of an ancient line of Aboriginal Paiwan kings, residents and environmentalists yesterday staged a parade in Daren Township (達仁), Taitung County, to protest Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower) plan to build a storage facility for nuclear waste there.
Taipower announced in March that Daren Township and Wangan Township (望安), Penghu County, were the two candidate sites for the nuclear waste dumping ground.
Opposed to the plan, more than 100 Paiwan and Puyuma Aborigines and environmentalists rallied outside a local elementary school yesterday morning, where they were blessed by Paiwan elders in a traditional ritual before they departed. The demonstrators then carried a cross on a two-hour march to the site selected for the facility.
PHOTO: CNA
After arriving at the site, the demonstrators erected the cross and made a smoke signal to inform their ancestral spirits of their determination to defend their ancestral homeland.
While officials and residents in Wangan have already voiced strong opposition to the proposal, Daren Township chief Chang Chin-sheng (張金生) and some residents welcomed the idea of building a nuclear waste site, saying the promised NT$5 billion (US$153 million) in compensation would help develop Daren.
The final decision has not been made.
“Lanyu Township [蘭嶼] in Taitung County has already been storing nuclear waste from around the country for more than 20 years. How can Taiwan Power Co and the Ministry of Economic Affairs continue to force us to take this highly contaminating and dangerous nuclear waste?” asked Lai Chin-feng (賴金風), convener of the Daren Alliance Against Nuclear Waste, adding that the township chief did not represent all Daren Township and Taitung County residents, nor did he represent all of the Paiwan tribe.
“This region has long been a traditional domain of the Tacupul Kingdom, and it’s the job of all descendants of Tacupul to defend it,” said Sauljaljuy Ruvaniyaw, a member of the Ruvaniyaw family — the royal family of the Tacupul Kingdom that ruled in Daren and its neighboring areas hundreds of years ago.
“This is our home and our country — you have no right to invade it and have no right to ask me why we don’t want nuclear waste here,” Ruvaniyaw said. “Just like a robber has no right to ask why the owner of the house won’t leave.”
“The grandparents of my grandparents lived here, they hunted here, they gathered food here, they fished here and they farmed here. That’s what the grandchildren of my grandchildren will do here, too,” she said. “I am Sauljaljuy Ruvaniyaw, the ruler of the Paiwan Kingdom of Tacupul.”
The rally and the march are only the beginning of the mobilization against the nuclear waste dumping ground, Ruvaniyaw said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS