Holding banners and wearing traditional outfits, hundreds of Tsou Aborigines from Alishan (阿里山) yesterday attempted to close off the narrow, winding road that connects the popular tourist destination to the outside to protest a government plan to resettle them outside of their traditional domain.
“Give us back our lands! Give us back our lands!” Hundreds of Tsou shouted as they protested on a section of Alishan Highway in Alishan Township, Chiayi County.
The protesters engaged in pushing and shoving with police when they tried to move to the middle of the highway to block it off.
PHOTO: HSIEH YIN-CHUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Shouting, yelling, minor physical clashes and a standoff between the two sides continued for about two hours.
The Tsou held the demonstration to oppose a county government plan to resettle residents originally living in parts of Alishan affected by Typhoon Morakot in August last year.
“The government should respect our wishes: We don’t want to leave our villages and if we have to leave our villages, we want to at least resettle within the township,” Typhoon Morakot Survivors’ Self-Help Association of the Alishan Region chairman Avai Akuyana said.
“Right now, the county government plans to construct a new ‘model community’ in Chukou Village [觸口], Fanlu Township [番路], to resettle us. According to the plan, however, the ‘model community’ is a village with a performance hall and souvenir shops for tourists. There is even a ticket booth at the entrance of the ‘model village,’” Akuyana said. “This is unacceptable. They are treating Aborigines as merchandise,” he said.
The tribe was never consulted and not a single Tsou was on the panel of experts that drew up the plan, he said.
“[The county government] does not understand us. It doesn’t know anything about our culture and it’s not even trying to understand,” Akuyana said.
Tzeng Tsung-kai (曾琮愷), a Chiayi County Government official, told the Taipei Times via telephone that the plan was only a draft and that nothing had been finalized.
“If the residents are not happy with any part of the plan, we would continue to negotiate with them and see what we can do,” he said.
“Our most important objective is only to find a safe place for them to resettle so that they don’t ever have to evacuate again,” Tzeng said.
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