President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) mistaking a Paiwan man for a member of the Amis tribe during a meeting with Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award recipients on Tuesday again revealed his abysmal ignorance of Aboriginal culture.
Choreographer Bulareyaung Pagarlava, attended the meeting in a traditional Paiwan outfit. However, when Ma greeted him and shook his hand, he asked: “Are you an Amis?”— a comment Pagarlava later said hurt his feelings.
It was not the first time Ma’s comments and actions have betrayed his lack of understanding of Aboriginal culture and discrimination against the nation’s Aborigines.
During the presidential campaign in 2007, Ma, the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate, visited Sijhou Community in Xindian, New Taipei City (新北市) amid protests from Amis members living there against a relocation plan.
When a local resident pleaded for “President Ma” to build an embankment to prevent the community’s relocation, he told the woman: “If you come into the city, you are a Taipei citizen; I see you as a human being, I see you as a citizen, and I will educate you well. Aborigines should adjust their mentality — if you come into the city you have to play by its rules.”
This insult was more than just a slip of tongue. It reflected Ma’s elitist attitude and deep discrimination against the group.
Ma later apologized for the comments, insisting that he had been quoted out of context and pledged to promote policies that would improve the rights of the indigenous people if elected.
Five years have passed since he was elected and little progress has been made. Aboriginal autonomy has not become a reality and ethnic discrimination continues.
Last year, former KMT Central Standing Committee (CSC) member Liao Wan-lung (廖萬隆) suggested in a CSC meeting that intermarriage between Aborigines and non-Aborigines should be discouraged to maintain the “purity” of Aboriginal blood.
A Mainland Affairs Council-sponsored TV ad that referred to the Aboriginals as pa-nga — an Amis word for penis or “loose women” — also sparked fury among Aboriginal tribes.
Ma, who promised to implement Aboriginal autonomy during the 2008 presidential campaign, told a CSC meeting last year that “ceding territories” to Aborigines to create autonomous regions was not what was best for Aborigines, since it could isolate them.
He also said the public should value the sporting or musical talents of Aborigines more, and that Aborigines may need “some degree of protection.”
Incidents of discrimination against Aborigines under the Ma administration have sabotaged efforts to raise public awareness of Aboriginal issues and to enable Aborigines to regain their cultural pride, long suppressed under KMT rule.
Taiwan’s 14 Aboriginal tribes account for only 2 percent of the population, and yet each tribe has established its own cultural system. Ma’s failure to recognize the traditional costume of the Paiwan tribe and to study the background of the award recipients made his promises to promote Aboriginal culture and improve the rights of Aborigines unconvincing.
To fulfil his promises and promote the rights of Aborigines, Ma should abandon his elitist, Han-centric mentality, and push the legislative review of a draft Aboriginal autonomy act that would allow each tribe to take on greater responsibility for preserving its own cultural assets as well create authentic autonomous regions.
The government should also promote the Indigenous Peoples Intellectual Property Act (原住民族傳統智慧創作保護條例), as the nation’s tribes start applying for protection of tribal naming rights and intellectual property under a trial implementation launched this year.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under