Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) Minister Sun Ta-chuan (孫大川) has pledged that the council would work to further enhance the rights of the Pingpu plains Aboriginal tribes.
“The era during which the existence of Pingpu tribes was ignored or even denied has come to an end, as the CIP has established a task force to take care of Pingpu-related affairs,” Sun said earlier this week.
COMMON CULTURE
He said it is undeniable that Pingpu plains tribes share a common culture and history with the “mountain” Aboriginal tribes, but that recognizing the status of the Pingpu plains tribes should not result in any damage to the rights and interests of the Aboriginal tribes already officially recognized.
Jason Pan (潘紀揚), the president of the Taiwan Association for Rights Advancement of Pingpu Plain Aborigine Peoples (TARA-Pingpu), filed a complaint with the UN special rapporteur on human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples on May 24.
In the complaint, he accused the Taiwanese government of refusing to officially recognize the Pingpu people and denying their rights.
Sun said that unofficial sources told him that UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya had rejected the complaint.
He added that the newly established tack force will be responsible for issues relating to identifying the Pingpu tribes and protecting their rights.
In response, Pan said TARA-Pingpu had not received an official response from the UN unit, and that he planned to meet Anaya next week at a conference on the rights of Aboriginal peoples sponsored by the office of the UN High Commission on Human Rights in Geneva from July 13 to July 15.
STATUS
CIP officials have said they regard Pingpu tribes as an integral part of the Austronesian tribes, even though they have yet to secure official Aboriginal status. Currently, there are about 500,000 officially recognized Aborigines in Taiwan, while Pingpu plain Aborigines number between 300,000 and 400,000. If the definition is relaxed, the number of Pingpu Aborigines may exceed 1 million.
INTEGRATION
The council said earlier that Pingpu Aboriginal tribes in Taiwan’s western plains have been gradually integrated with Han Chinese over the past 300 to 400 years.
Different governing strategies during the Qing Dynasty and Japanese colonial rule led many of their descendants to choose not to register their Aboriginal status.
As a result, regulations governing Aborigines under the current legal system cannot apply to them, the CIP said.
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