Tao Aborigines from Orchid Island (蘭嶼) yesterday protested on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei, saying radioactive material was leaking from a nuclear waste dump on the island. They demanded that the storage facility be removed.
“Survival is the only reason why we are here; we’re here for the survival of generations to come,” Tao Cultural Development Association chairman Syaman Raus told a crowd standing in the rain.
“A nuclear leak has occurred. The water, the soil, the animals and vegetation on the island have been contaminated. We live on a small island with very limited arable land and resources. How can we live?” he asked.
Photo: CNA
“Taiwan Power Co [Taipower] said there’s no problem. It’s all lies,” he said.
Although residents of Orchid Island — also known as Lanyu or Pongso no Tao, “Island of the People” in the Tao language — have long suspected that a radioactive leak has occurred, it was first officially confirmed when Academia Sinica research fellow Huh Chih-an (扈治安) detected radioactivity on the island after being commissioned by Taipower at the end of last month.
Taipower at the time argued that the amount of radioactive material detected was minimal and could not be considered a leak.
It said that only a few rust-eaten barrels storing nuclear waste had holes in them and that the company was checking the condition of all the barrels.
Orchid Island is home to the country’s only nuclear waste storage facility, which was completed in 1982 to serve the nuclear power plants on Taiwan proper.
Individual researchers detected unusual amounts of cesium-137 and cobalt-37 in soil from farmland on the island about a decade ago.
Both are elements found in nuclear waste.
Despite the rain, dozens of people from the island stood on the boulevard, wearing traditional outfits and holding banners calling for an end to nuclear waste storage on Lanyu.
“The Republic of China [ROC] government is a killer government,” said Syaman Ngarayu, a preacher at a local church.
“We Taos are such a small people and the ROC is contaminating our water and our soil, they’re killing us with nuclear waste,” he said.
Syaman Rapongan, a writer and native of Lanyu, read a protest poem that he wrote.
“Wild savages, here’s your breakfast,” he read. “Cobalt-60 is for the men, cesium-137 is for the women. As for the kids, extinction is your breakfast.”
After reading the poem, Syaman Rapongan accused the government of deceiving the Tao.
He said that since the ROC government took over Orchid Island the quality of life has been deteriorating.
“In 1980, you [the ROC government] said that you would build a manufacturing factory for canned fish for us. However, it turned out that this ‘factory’ is a nuclear storage facility,” Syaman Rapongan said.
“We’ve been searching for happiness, but since our encounter, the ROC government brings us only threats to our survival,” he 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