Aboriginal rights advocates yesterday protested on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei, urging President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to deliver on her promise two years ago to promote transitional justice for the nation’s Aborigines.
Tsai on Aug. 1, 2016, delivered a landmark apology to Aborigines on behalf of current and past governments.
She promised to reinstate traditional Aboriginal territories and promote the preservation of their culture and language.
However, Aboriginal rights advocates said that Tsai had “lied to them,” as the government has failed to stop developers from obtaining permission to carry out construction projects on traditional Aboriginal territories, which are essential to the preservation of their culture.
Under the Council of Indigenous Peoples’ guidelines on the delineation of traditional territories issued in February last year, government-designated “traditional territories” only include public land and not private land, said Salone Ishahavut, a Bunun professor of indigenous development at National Chi Nan University.
“The government justified it by saying that there is plenty of public land. However, as we have seen in the case of Asia Cement Corp (亞泥), while most of the land being used for the company’s mining operations in Hualien County’s Sincheng Township (新城) is public, it was able to avoid negotiating with the Truku people, as the Bureau of Mines said there was no need to obtain the community’s consent,” Ishahavut said.
While the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act (原住民族基本法) stipulates that any development project near an Aboriginal community must be approved by the community, Asia Cement never had to obtain the Truku people’s consent or pass an environmental impact assessment for its Hualien quarry, said Didi Chang, a Truku who lives near the mine.
“The government twice renewed [Asia Cement’s] mining permit and twice we were not informed. It was all a lie,” he said.
The way the government has treated Aborigines is no different from past governments, as it continues to allow businesses to occupy their land, forcing them to leave their homes, Chang added.
“The government could have amended the Mining Act (礦業法) to better protect the rights of the Truku people, but it did not,” said Amis singer Panai Kusui, who has been protesting near the Presidential Office Building for more than 500 days, demanding that the government guarantee Aboriginal peoples’ land rights
She urged Tsai to deliver on her promise to achieve transitional justice for Aborigines, saying: “We are still waiting.”
The protesters demanded that the government amend the council’s guidelines to include private land in traditional Aboriginal territories and that council Minister Icyang Parod step down.
They also called for legislation to achieve historical justice for Aborigines by requiring the government to investigate past injustices and carry out corrective measures, similar to the Act Governing the Settlement of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例).
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