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'I can't sign pledge,' Ma tells Aborigines

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday refused to promise to attempt to halt plans to demolish the Sanying (三鶯) and Sijhou (溪洲) Aboriginal communities and the Losheng Sanatorium.

Protesters staged a demonstration that blocked the entrance to a press conference at Ma's campaign headquarters in Taipei. Holding placards that read "[We want the right to] live on the site," the demonstrators asked Ma to sign a pledge that the sanatorium and the two communities would not be demolished by force.

Ma refused.

"I can't promise to do what you're asking," Ma told the activists. "If I'm elected [president], I'll be heading the central government, but I would still have to talk to the local governments before any decision could be made. Of course I can make the promise, but I may not be able to fulfill it -- is that what you want?"

Ma said he would "act according to the law" when handling the issues and said he would "try to understand what's going on through the local government."

"I'm a caring person -- I tore down a lot of illegal homes as Taipei mayor and a lot of the residents came back and thanked me," he said.

Sanying and Sijhou communities are both located in Taipei County.

The two communities' residents are Amis Aborigines who moved to Taipei to work as construction workers or miners decades ago. Not able to afford housing in the city, they built homes themselves on unused land on riverbanks.

Both communities are facing forced demolition by the county government, since both the sites are classified as "flood areas."

Most of homes in the Sanying Community were torn down by the County goverment last week.

Losheng is a sanatorium complex in Taipei County that was completed in 1930 during the Japanese colonial period and was used to keep patients with Hansen's disease in isolation.

A plan to demolish most of the complex to make way for a mass rapid transport maintenance depot has met with opposition, as preservationists believe it is of important historical value.

Ma's response the their requests angered the demonstrators.

"A large part of the KMT's assets were stolen from the Aborigines," yelled Pan Chin-hua (潘金花), a Sanying resident whose home was torn down last Thursday.

Pan said the lands belonging to his father in Taitung County were taken by force by the KMT government after they came to Taiwan in 1949.

"I'm bleeding inside -- what happened to my father is now happening to me," she said.
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