Taipei city councilors and Atayal Aborigines yesterday demanded that Taipei City Indigenous Peoples Commission Chairwoman Chen Xiu-hui (陳秀惠) step down for allegedly saying that Atayal men shared their wives with distinguished guests during the Japanese colonial era.
Holding up placards reading “ignorant” and “step down,” a dozen Atayal men and women told a news conference that Chen’s remark had stigmatized their tribe.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Lee Fu Chung-wu (李傅中武) said that while teaching a class to cultivate female Aboriginal talent last year, Chen said that, as an act of courtesy, Atayal men often asked their wives to sleep with distinguished guests and that this practice was recorded in history books.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Lee Fu said his own research found that the Atayal have a very conservative culture and promiscuity was severely punished.
He said Chen could not even tell fact from fiction, because when she was asked to provide evidence to substantiate her remarks, Chen quoted a passage from a novel about Aborigines.
“My mother was born seven years before the founding of the Republic of China,” Golden Melody Award-winning Atayal musician Wu Ting-hung (吳廷宏) said. “I have never heard her say that Atayal men treat their guests with their wives. Do you know what we treat our guests with? Cured meat and wine.”
Wu said Chen should restore Atayal Aborigines’ reputation by resigning.
During a question-and-answer session with Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) at the Taipei City Council later yesterday, KMT Taipei City Councilor Lee Fan-ju (李芳儒), an Amis, played footage from earlier this month where Chen answered his questions in Amis.
Lee asked Chen at the time whether she had conducted polls that could substantiate her claim that local residents were against the establishment of a performance area dedicated to Aborigines next to the Dadaochen Harbor (大稻埕), saying his conversations with local borough wardens indicated otherwise.
Chen said she read a news report about public opposition to the project, and then made further comments in Amis, angering Lee, who said he only understood half of it.
After consulting with elders in his tribe, he said he found out that Chen’s remark translates into: “Do not frame me through others” or “Do not attempt to murder me and frame someone else for it.”
Lee said Chen was arrogant for making such serious accusations.
He also criticized Chen for downsizing last year’s Naluwan Cultural Festival, Taipei’s most important Aboriginal sporting event, and turning it into a fun fair.
Furthermore, the commission only features 10 Aboriginal languages out of a total of 16 on a Web site promoting Aboriginal languages, he said.
Lee said that if Ko does not fire Chen, he and his colleagues would uncover more gaffes that Chen has made in the past, and Ko would be risking his political career by protecting Chen.
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