In August last year, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) promised that a report revealing the facts behind nuclear waste storage on Orchid Island (蘭嶼, Lanyu) would be completed within six months. In October, the Cabinet formulated guidelines and at the end of that month, the Orchid Island nuclear waste fact-finding task force convened for the first time. This means that the report should be ready before the end of this month.
The fact-finding task force has only convened twice. After sending out requests for data from the relevant agencies, only the Atomic Energy Council provided any data — 87 documents showing that the waste was initially only to be stored temporarily on Orchid Island before “being dumped in the sea.”
Nothing is mentioned in the documents about the decisionmaking process or who took this decision. Taiwan Power Co, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of National Defense, the Vocational Assistance Commission for Retired Servicemen and other agencies refused to provide any material, and as a result the facts remain unclear and Tsai will fail to deliver on her promise.
The situation is the same at the Presidential Office’s Indigenous Historical Justice and Transitional Justice Commission: It has only convened twice. At the first meeting, commission members posed for photographs with the president and at the second meeting, they discussed the rules for allocating land to Aboriginal peoples and communities, which is closely connected to the fate of the nation’s indigenous peoples. The result was that “to respect the Legislative Yuan’s autonomy,” the legislature should be allowed to decide on the rules and the commission merely offered the meeting protocol as a reference for legislators.
Compare this with the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee, which was established in August last year. The committee has held 17 meetings, organized four public hearings, issued five orders and frozen Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) bank accounts twice, stopping it from paying its employees.
The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee is moving with lightning speed while the Orchid Island nuclear waste fact-finding task force and the Indigenous Historical Justice and Transitional Justice Commission are moving at the speed of a snail.
The reason is that the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee has a secret weapon: investigative powers. The committee can request materials from agencies, organizations and individuals and the targets of the investigation cannot sidestep the request or refuse to provide the requested materials.
On the other hand, the task force and the commission do not have investigative powers and can only ask for explanations or request that agencies provide materials, which means that the targets of the investigation can ignore requests.
All three organizations are addressing transitional justice, so why are Aborigines treated differently?
On Aug. 3 last year, Tsai told singer Panai Kusui that “all materials are in government agencies and this is different from the information about ill-gotten party assets which is all in the hands of the KMT and when the government wants to start this process, it can start collecting all this information ... and the Presidential Office can instruct the Cabinet to investigate.”
More than half a year later, have they collected all the information? A comparison between these three organizations — all tasked with initiating transitional justice — shows that although all the information is in the government’s hands and although the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is in complete control of the government, these organizations will not be able to demand any information as long as they do not have investigative powers.
No matter how nicely they ask, they will get no information and no one will come around to offer any explanations. This makes one wonder if this talk about transitional justice is just bogus. How many more years must Aborigines wait? How many more years can the older generation of indigenous peoples wait?
On Ketagalan Boulevard, Tsai said: “The DPP has a very soft spot when it comes to dealing with Aborigines, so if achieving transitional justice for Aborigines really means amending the law, although the government does not have sufficient power, we have special investigation powers, and I do not rule out passing new legislation … in other words, I will set up a Presidential Office committee chaired by the president. We will clarify everything, and we will prioritize issues that can be handled by current legislation. If that is not enough, we will consider new legislation as the next step.”
The experiment that has taken place over the past six months makes it abundantly clear that there will be no transitional justice without investigative powers.
Tsai should take the same attitude that she displayed when she offered her apology in August last year and prioritize an act for transitional justice for indigenous peoples that matches the Act Governing the Handling 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) and establishes a committee for handling transitional justice for indigenous peoples with investigative powers similar to those of the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee.
After 400 years, it is time to allow transitional justice for Aborigines a real chance of success.
Salone Ishahavut is an assistant professor in the bachelor’s program for Indigenous Peoples at Jinan University. Mayaw Biho is founder of the Classroom for Aboriginal Transitional Justice.
Translated by Perry Svensson
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
RSS