Aboriginal leaders claimed yesterday to hold the key to the presidential election, demanding that both political camps act to prevent their way of life from being wiped out.
Community leaders led a march yesterday to protest decades of what they said were human rights abuses and claimed that successive governments had ignored their appeals to preserve their language and identity.
They claimed that Aborigines represented 5 percent of the country's 23 million people and could swing the vote on March 20, with President Chen Shui-bian (
"We may be a minority but we believe our votes will play a crucial role in this tight election," said protest organizer Pan Jae-yang, without expressing support for either camp.
Pan said, "Neither the KMT nor the DPP government has offered any help in preserving our culture and heritage. This is practically genocide of our race as we watch our language and culture being slowly wiped out."
Several hundred protesters marched from Chen's campaign headquarters to Lien's and delivered petitions to both camps demanding improved rights for Aborigines.
Aborigines receive some government money to help preserve their culture but Aboriginal leaders say that another 800,000 people living outside the nation's mountainous regions suffer from not being officially recognized by the government.
"We are truly the masters of Taiwan, but our rights and benefits are ignored by the Chen government," said independent Legislator May Chin (
She said that Chen had gone back on promises made to the Aboriginal people four years ago.
"He pledged to grant us greater autonomy in our tribal settlements and more resources, but nothing substantial has been done to improve our people's lives," she said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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