Amis Aborigines and rights activists yesterday criticized the Presidential Office over the treatment of Aborigines during a protest for land rights last month.
Amis Aborigines, supporters and rights advocates staged a demonstration in front of the Presidential Office to protest the seizure of tribal lands in Hualien and Taitung counties since the Republic of China government took power in Taiwan.
Tribal leaders complained that Amis tribesmen have to pay rent to the government to use lands passed down to them by their ancestors, and urged the government to apologize and return the lands.
Representatives of the demonstrators were invited into the Presidential Office to submit a petition. However, they were asked to enter the building through a side door. The protesters insisted on entering through the front as invited guests.
The representatives also said that a public relations official Huang Ta-chun (黃大鈞), was rude.
The Presidential Office released a press statement on Jan. 31 saying that the representatives could not enter through the front gate because some tribal leaders wanted to bring what the statement described as their fandao (番刀) — or “barbarian knives” — with them. This meant they had to go through the side door, in accordance with the Regulations on the Handling of Petitions of the Presidential Office (總統府處理人民陳情作業要點).
The statement said that Huang treated the representatives “with patience.”
In a press conference in Taipei yesterday the Amis Defense Alliance, which organized the rally, rebutted the Presidential Office’s statement and accused it of lying.
The alliance showed a video shot inside the Presidential Office that shows the petitioners had no knives.
“The video shows that the Presidential Office is lying; no one had any knives with them,” said Namoh Nofu, a member of the alliance. “You could see that Huang was impatient, repeatedly telling us ‘not to waste too much time,’ and did nothing to take down what we were saying.”
Another alliance member, Mayaw Biho, criticized the Presidential Office for using the term fandao when referring to the hunting knives.
“Huang was impatient and yelled at us several times during the meeting,” Mayaw said. “When he asked us to sign a paper, he said we could also sign our ‘English name.’”
“We don’t write our names in English, but we write it in an officially recognized Romanization system,” Mayaw said, panning the Presidential Office’s lack of knowledge about Aborigines.
The Regulations on the Handling of Petitions of the Presidential Office, which the office cited in the press statement, contain no mention about petitioners with knives having to go through a side door.
“We demand that the Presidential Office apologize for lying to the public and humiliating the Aborigines, and that Huang should step down right away,” Namoh said.
The Presidential Office later changed the word “fandao” to liedao (獵刀, hunting knives) in the online version of the press release.
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