Indigenous people must not become the victim of manipulation by politicians to intimidate the government, as well as create strife and sow division between ethnic groups, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) said yesterday, ahead of a protest by indigenous groups organized by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators.
“We hope the opposition parties would stop blocking the nation’s proposed fiscal budget for next year. We should move on to scrutinizing and reviewing the budget in the legislative committees,” Wu said. “Taiwan’s indigenous people must not be manipulated or be used as tools for political struggle and hostile confrontation, or be misled by political parties.”
KMT Legislator Huang Jen (黃仁) yesterday announced that 2,000 people would hold a protest outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei today.
Photo: CNA
Huang, an Amis, called on indigenous groups to start a “chu cao” (出草), which historically and culturally refer to a “head-hunting campaign against enemy intruders.”
Huang said indigenous groups are angry at the ruling party for not following amendments to the Logging Ban Compensation for Lands Reserved for Indigenous Peoples Act (原住民保留地禁伐補償條例) enacted by the legislature in June, in which the compensation was increased to NT$60,000 (US$1,870) per hectare.
In the Executive Yuan’s proposed budget, the compensation remained at NT$30,000 per hectare, with total spending estimated to be NT$2.1 billion.
DPP members said that as the money would come from the budget for the Council of Indigenous Peoples, increasing the compensation would reduce funding for social welfare, education, medical care and other subsidy programs for indigenous communities.
After negotiations, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) on Tuesday agreed to increase the compensation to NT$60,000 in a goodwill gesture to end the deadlock over the budget review, but stressed that the concession would be a one-off “exception.”
Meanwhile, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) issued a news release condemning the KMT for organizing the protest, calling it an action by unscrupulous politicians using false narratives to agitate indigenous people, intimidate the government and create social strife.
“The push by the KMT and supported by the Taiwan People’s Party to increase the per hectare compensation to benefit only indigenous communities is a perverted form of vote buying — to guarantee that they get the vote of indigenous constituencies during elections,” TSU Chairwoman Chou Ni-an (周倪安) said in the release.
“Together, the KMT and the TPP should focus on the review and approval of the fiscal budget to allow the government to function and continue programs that benefit that livelihood and welfare of all Taiwanese,” Chou said. “They are stalling the budget instead of taking it up for committee reviews. In doing so, they have allowed partisan politics to hijack the fiscal budget, holding all citizens to ransom, to paralyze the government.”
“The compensation for the logging ban on indigenous land would only benefit government-recognized indigenous groups, and exclude out those who are also indigenous people, but are not recognized by the government,” she said.
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