Standing amid a thunderstorm, dozens of Pingpu Aborigines yesterday gathered on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei for the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples to protest against the government’s denial of their Aboriginal status.
“We are now standing on the land that was once the traditional domain of the Ketagalan — one of the Pingpu Aboriginal tribes,” Siraya Cultural Association spokeswoman Uma Talavan said. “The Republic of China (ROC) occupies our land, the Presidential Office stands on traditional Ketagalan land, but refuses to recognize us as Aborigines.”
“The government is pushing us into annihilation,” she added.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Talavan said in the past decade, the government has always said it would “look into the issue,” but thus far, no conclusion has been reached. Pingpu Aborigines comprise several Aboriginal tribes that once lived in the country’s flat areas.
While most of the Pingpu Aborigines have lost their cultures and languages, and adopted those of Han Chinese, some are intent on keeping their identity and are campaigning for the government to officially recognize them as Aborigines.
However, despite more than 20 years of efforts, they still have not been granted official status.
“A regime that does not respect the first inhabitants of the island is an illegitimate regime,” Presbyterian Church of Taiwan pastor Lee Hsiao-chung (李孝忠) said.
“Let’s take out our red cards, and show them to the ROC government, it’s time for us to tell it to get out of Taiwan,” he said, referring to the penalty given in soccer to kick a player out of the game.
Jason Pan (潘紀揚), a representative of the Pazeh Pingpu Aboriginal tribe, said that without Pingpu Aborigines, Taiwanese culture and history would be incomplete.
“We cannot allow the Pingpus to vanish. We are here because we want to tell the ROC government and the world that the Pingpu Aborigines are still here, alive and well,” Pan said.
Representatives of the demonstrators were received by a Presidential Office public relations officer, who listened to their petitions.
“We met with a new public relations officer surnamed Lee (李) and we think she’s better than the one we met before,” Talavan said after the meeting. “She listened more attentively, showed more interest and I felt she was more sincere.”
Talavan said Lee had said there was a discrepancy between the information provided by Pingpu groups and the Council of Indigenous Peoples and said she would research the issue herself.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS