Lawmakers across party lines yesterday accused the Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) of failing to fully defend Aboriginal rights, allowing development projects to take place on traditional Aboriginal domains without residents’ consent despite the demands of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act (原住民族基本法).
Holding a map that shows more than a dozen ongoing or planned development projects located within Aboriginal domains in Taitung County, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) accused council Minister Sun Ta-chuan (孫大川) of failing to defend Aboriginal rights.
“You are a Puyuma from Taitung County, minister. Look at this map, look at what’s happening in your home county,” Tuan said during a question-and-answer session of the Internal Administration Committee meeting. “In the past few years, Aborigines have been protesting development projects in their traditional domains. Why are you not doing anything to help them?”
By law, Aboriginal communities must provide consent before development or research activities can take place in their domains, Tuan said.
“The council has always stood firmly for the rights of Aborigines and we’re concerned about development projects in traditional domains,” Sun said. “However, we’re a country based on the rule of law and before the bills on Aboriginal land and sea domains and autonomy are passed, we cannot do anything legally to stop such development projects.”
“I plead for help from all lawmakers to quickly pass legislation so that we can have a legal basis to defend Aborigines’ right to their traditional domains,” he added.
However, Tuan said the council is not working hard enough even when it has the legal capacity to do so.
The council is not doing anything to help the Tao Aborigines’ struggle to remove nuclear waste from Orchid Island, also known as Lanyu (蘭嶼), Tuan said, adding it was unable to stop Nantian Village (南田) in Taitung County’s Daren Township (達仁) — a traditional domain of the Paiwan Aborigines — from being a candidate for a new nuclear waste storage facility even though a council representative had participated in Taiwan Power Co’s site selection meetings.
Sun said the council representative protested at the meeting, but those who agreed to make Nantian a candidate outnumbered the council representative in the voting.
Sun again asked the legislature for help in passing laws related to Aboriginal land and autonomy.
Tuan said the legislature has yet to receive draft bills from the council and asked Sun to do so by the end of next month, to which Sun said a bill was being reviewed by the Executive Yuan and that he could not guarantee when it would be referred to the legislature.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Liao Kuo-tung (廖國棟) — an Amis Aborigine — and Chien Tung-ming (簡東明) — a Paiwan — as well as People First Party Legislator Lin Cheng-er (林正二) — an Amis — also criticized the council and the government for what they said was slow progress in fulfilling promises of Aboriginal autonomy.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
RSS