Although the legislature may start reviewing a law setting the framework for Aboriginal autonomy during its next session, the road to autonomy for the nation's Aboriginal tribes is still a long way off, officials said.
Minister of the Council of Indigenous Peoples Walis Perin announced at a press conference last Friday that it was preparing to submit a draft of the Aboriginal Autonomous Regions Act (AARA,
During his campaign for the 2000 presidential election, President Chen Shui-bian (
Since then, several drafts of the bill have been drawn up before council officials agreed on the current version, said Mayaw Dongi, director of the council's Department of Planning.
The proposed law would provide a framework for Aboriginal autonomy, but the details, such as administrative organization, will be left to the decision of each autonomous region, Mayaw said.
Implementing the law could present quite a challenge, however, he said.
The first step -- definition of Aboriginal boundaries -- could spark endless debate, he said.
"The Atayal and the Bunun live on both sides of the Central Mountain Range," Mayaw said. "Bunun also live in southern Taiwan" and Aboriginal and Han Taiwanese often live side by side.
Financing also could be a serious problem, he said.
"Among the 30 Aboriginal townships, perhaps only two are self-sustainable," Mayaw said.
"Most Aborigines are concerned about the financial issue," he said. "Many would rather not choose autonomy if that meant poverty."
To solve this problem, the council has proposed that the central government allocate a percentage of the general budget to Aboriginal autonomous regions based on the population in each region.
"But government agencies in charge of financial affairs do not seem to favor this idea," Mayaw said.
Mayaw is also worried about potential day-to-day administrative issues.
"They never had any formal system of government on tribal or pan-Aboriginal levels," Mayaw said. "The idea of forming a tribe was something imposed on them by academics."
By tradition, Aborigines are village-oriented, he said.
"Two neighboring villages may share the same language, but they could be sworn enemies," he said.
Other issues, such as interaction between an autonomous region and the central government, will need to be clarified, he said, adding that "some may even require amending the Constitution."
"We would like to push the AARA through the legislature first," but implementing it would involve a lot of work, Mayaw said.
NATURE TAKES ITS COURSE: The agency’s head said he felt a sense of loss watching red-banded snakes eat the babies, as they had decided on non-intervention The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released a documentary on a hundred-pace viper that had incubated 16 eggs, all of which hatched, but only a baby viper escaped after they were attacked by red-banded snakes. The agency’s Taichung branch last year launched the viper reproduction monitoring project soon after forest rangers Lin Chun-yu (林俊佑) and Chou Chia-cheng (周家成) spotted a pregnant hundred-pace viper in a grass-covered burrow near a parking lot in Tbulan Village (松鶴部落). The Atayal village, in Taichung’s Heping District (和平), is headed by Ecyang Yapu, who was positive about the project and assisted in access control and power
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said that it had deployed vessels to “monitor” Chinese ships operating in waters off the east coast. The CGA said it dispatched vessels in response to a China Coast Guard announcement that it had carried out another “routine law-enforcement patrol” in waters off the east coast. “The CGA firmly rejects China’s cognitive warfare campaign of ‘law enforcement in name, jurisdictional expansion in practice,’” it said on X. As of 11am yesterday, two China Coast Guard ships were “loitering and drifting” about 105 nautical miles (195km) and 74 nautical miles east of Green Island (綠島) respectively, it said. It
A sharp rise in compensation to be paid by air force officers who leave before completing their required service could indicate an increase in pilots leaving the military early, an analyst said on Friday, warning that the trend could worsen a shortage of experienced personnel. Chieh Chung (揭仲), a researcher at the Association for Strategic Foresight, issued the warning even though the number of volunteer military personnel is expected to increase next year. The planned headcount for volunteer military personnel, covering officers, noncommissioned officers (NCO) and enlisted soldiers, is 158,223 for next year, up 4,258 from 153,965 this year, Chieh said. The increase
Potential improvements to munitions used by China’s long-range rocket-artillery units could extend their range to cover the entire Miyako Strait, which might give the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) the ability to secure the strategic waterway, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said in a report. The PLA’s long-range rocket-artillery units deployed along the Taiwan Strait are concentrated along the coast of Fujian Province, including Changle, Pingtan and Shishi, the quarterly report on China said. The artillery brigades of the PLA’s 71st, 72nd and 73rd group armies have been deployed, with preparations for potential battlefield operations under way since August 2022, the report
RSS