Amis singer Panai Kusui has won her appeal against fines from the Taipei City Government over her protests in 228 Peace Memorial Park, but she and her allies are more focused on their long-running fight against the central government’s Aboriginal lands policy.
The Taipei Parks and Street Lights Office last year fined Panai NT$7,200 for contravening Article 13 of the Taipei City Park Management Ordinance (臺北市公園管理自治條例) on July 16, 18 and 19 by setting up tables, chairs, boxes, cabinets and structures at the park without permission.
Panai lost her initial court battle over the fines, and an appeal in February, but the Taipei District Court on July 27 ruled in favor of Panai, saying that she was exercising her freedom of speech without hindering public passage through the park or damaging its facilities.
Panai and her colleagues were back at the park on Sunday to continue their protest on the land issue and their fight for “Indigenous Transformative Justice.”
Panai declined to comment on the court verdict, saying she was not feeling well and was still working on strategies with her lawyer.
She and her allies are fighting a regulation enacted by the Council of Indigenous Peoples in February 2017 that defines and zones what can be classified as indigenous “traditional territories and lands,” following President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) Aug. 1, 2016, promise to delineate traditional Aboriginal territories and lands.
Panai and others held a news conference in front of the Presidential Office Building on Feb. 23, 2017, to criticize the regulation, saying it excluded privately held lands, thereby limiting where Aborigines could hold traditional activities, and call for its amendment.
The council said that including private lands in traditional Aboriginal territories would violate the right of property under the Constitution, and it was not authorized by the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law (原住民族基本法) to include private lands in the regulation.
Panai and other advocates set up a protest site on Ketagalan Boulevard in May that year, before moving it to the nearby National Taiwan University Hospital MRT Station on June 4 under pressure from Taipei officials.
The city tore down displays, tents and traditional painted stones placed around the station in March 2018 and January last year, saying they were harming Taipei’s cityscape, which led the group to move to its current location in the park on Jan. 24 last year.
The city has yet to say whether it plans to appeal last month’s court ruling.
Taiwanese could risk being extradited to China when traveling in countries with close ties to Beijing, Taiwan Association of University Professors deputy chairman Chen Li-fu (陳俐甫) said on Friday. Chen’s comments came after China on Friday last week announced new judicial guidelines targeting Taiwanese independence advocates. Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Djibouti are among the countries where Taiwanese could risk being extradited to China, he said. The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday elevated the travel alert for China, Hong Kong and Macau to “orange” after Beijing announced its guidelines to “severely punish Taiwanese independence diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession.” Extradition treaties
Taiwan and Thailand have signed an agreement to promote and protect bilateral investment and trade, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations (OTN) said on Friday. The agreement on “Promotion and Protection of Investments” was signed by Representative to Thailand Chang Chun-fu (張俊福) and Thailand Trade and Economic Office in Taipei executive director Narong Boonsatheanwong on Thursday, the OTN said in a news release. Thailand has become the fifth trading partner to sign an investment agreement with Taiwan since 2016, following earlier agreements with the Philippines, India, Vietnam and Canada, the OTN said. The deal marks a significant milestone in the development of
The entire Alishan Forest Railway line is to reopen for the first time in 15 years on Saturday, with tickets to go on sale at 2pm today. The historic railway from Chiayi to Alishan (阿里山) is finally set to reopen after the completion of the final No. 42 tunnel, Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office Deputy Director-General Chou Heng-kai (周恆凱) said. It is to run on a new timetable, with four trains daily, he said. The 9am train is to depart from Chiayi Railway Station bound for Shizilu Station (十字路), while the 10am train departing from Chiayi is to go all the
FLU CONTINUES: Hospitals reported 101,091 visits for flu-like illnesses last week, while 68 severe cases and 16 flu-related deaths were also reported, the CDC said The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported 932 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and 64 related deaths for last week, adding that the number of people who had contracted new SARS-CoV-2 subvariants KP.2 and LB.1 has increased. The number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 increased from 815 in the previous week to 932 last week, while 90 percent of the 64 deceased were aged 65 or older, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. JN.1 was still the dominant variant among local and imported cases in the past four weeks, while KP.2 was the second-most common, Lin said. Cases with the LB.1 subvariant