Tibetan and Buddhist groups have seized the upcoming visit of the Dalai Lama as a chance to publicize concerns over their rights.
Tibetans in Taiwan who have overstayed visas yesterday demanded to be granted legitimate status and Buddhists called for gender equality in Buddhism.
With the Dalai Lama set to arrive tomorrow, KMT lawmaker Apollo Chen (
One of the Tibetans in the film clip said that it was difficult for him to find a job, and even if he did, the boss would pay him poorly because he did not hold a Taiwanese identification card.
Another Tibetan said she never took her two-year-old child to the hospital because the baby did not have an official birth certificate. She said that dogs in Taiwan have a better standard of life than her family.
Chen urged the government to speed up the pace of granting legal status to the Tibetans illegally residing in Taiwan as a gesture of its sincerity to safeguard human rights. He said that since 1999 he had dealt with more than 10 cases concerning Tibetans who have overstayed in Taiwan, but two years had passed and these Tibetans were still struggling at the bottom of society with their living conditions showing no signs of improving.
The lawmaker said the best gift during the Dalai Lama's visit would be if the president exercised clemency and granted lawful status to these Tibetan people.
There are around 140 Tibetans living illegally in Taiwan, mostly in the Taipei area. They mainly come from India, Nepal and Bhutan. Some of them entered Taiwan with fake passports or short-term visas for study, work or for training programs and then overstayed their visas.
Meanwhile, the Hong Shi Foundation (弘誓文教基金會), a Buddhist association headed by Master Shih Chao Hui (釋昭慧), will hold a seminar tomorrow at Academia Sinica to petition the Tibetan leader to promote gender equality in Buddhism. The association would like him to abolish Buddhist regulations that discriminate against nuns and expedite the rehabilitation of the bhiksuni (full-fledged nun) system in Tibetan Buddhism.
Master Shih Chao Hui told the Taipei Times that the Buddhist codes the "Eight Dharmas of Respect (
The Eight Dharmas of Respect refers to eight regulations which require nuns to pay respect to monks. For example, nuns are not allowed to criticize monks even if the monks are at fault, and senior nuns have to bow to junior monks.
She said that these regulations violated the nature of Buddhist teaching, which says that any ordinances leading to injustice and pain should be eradicated.
As for S'iksamana, which states that women willing to take monastic vows first have to be observed for two years to ensure they are not pregnant, the master said that with current medical advances, there was no need to wait two years to determine if a women was pregnant.
She said these orders appeared extremely unfair to nuns and should therefore be abolished.
With regard to the fact that there is not yet a bhiksuni system in Tibetan Buddhism, Master Shih Chao Hui appealed to the Tibetan leader to accelerate efforts to advocate gender equality in his religion.
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