The law must be revised if the government wants to grant official recognition to Pingpu Aborigines campaigning for their rights, Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) Deputy Minister Lin Chiang-yi (林江義) said earlier this week.
Saying that the Aboriginal Identity Act (原住民身份法) stipulates that only Aborigines residing in mountain areas can be officially recognized as Aborigines, Lin said until the act is amended, the CIP must abide by the principle of the rule of law in dealing with the Pingpu people’s desire for official recognition as Aborigines.
Jason Pan (潘紀揚), president of the Taiwan Association for Rights Advancement of Pingpu Plain Aborigine Peoples, however, described Lin’s legal argument as “ineffectual and circular.”
“Article 2 leaves room open for further inclusion of groups after a survey has been done. The spirit of the law is inclusiveness, but it’s actually being used to exclude groups,” Pan said. “It’s become a politically discriminatory law that excludes the Pingpu people.”
He questioned the government’s interpretation of what an Aborigine “residing in a mountain area” is.
“By Lin’s standards, the Tao tribe and the Amis should not be recognized as Aborigines,” Pan said. “Close to 50 percent of the so-called “mountain Aborigines” now live in urban areas. Should they lose recognition status?”
The Tao live on Orchid Island, mostly in coastal areas, and the Amis, the most populous officially recognized Aboriginal group in Taiwan, live in the valleys and coastal areas of eastern Taiwan, Pan said.
Pan’s group said on Sunday that the UN special rapporteur on human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples has accepted its request to probe what the group calls the Taiwanese government’s refusal to grant the Pingpu official Aboriginal status.
Pan said the group received a message from UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya on May 6 saying its request would be given “close and careful consideration,” and that the UN could initiate communications with the Taiwanese government on the issue.
Asked about the CIP’s stance on the issue, Lin said the council has not yet received any information from the UN.
“If the UN rapporteur takes the initiative to contact us, we would be more than willing to communicate with him over the issue,” Lin said.
The CIP has subsequently issued a statement reiterating its respect for various Pingpu tribal groups’ appeals for official recognition of their status as Aborigines.
“The council will soon form a special task force to deal with the Pingpu affairs and will sincerely communicate with the relevant advocacy groups,” the statement said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods