Activists yesterday panned the Presidential Office over its recent response to a petition from Pingpu Aborigines for official recognition, saying its reply was contradictory.
“I was shocked by the response,” Lin Sheng-yi (林勝義), a descendant of the Pingpu Ketagalan tribe, told the Taipei Times via telephone. “Both President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and [Council of Indigenous Peoples Minister] Sun Ta-chuan [孫大川] received high degrees from abroad; I don’t know why they have so little understanding of human rights.”
Responding to a petition submitted by several Pingpu Aboriginal rights groups after a demonstration last month, the Presidential Office said in a written statement addressed to Lin that it fully supported the Pingpu “in the area of culture and history,” but chose to leave the ethnic recognition issue to one side because it is “very complicated and needs to be dealt with very carefully.”
The Pingpu are an indigenous people who once inhabited most of the plains across the country. Many lost their culture and language over time as a result of their close interaction with Han Chinese immigrants from China.
Most also forfeited official recognition when they failed to “register” their ethnic identity with the government in the 1960s because of administrative failings.
“We Pingpu are an indigenous people, and that is a fact that was recorded by the Spanish, the Dutch, the Qing Chinese and the Japanese, who all ruled over Taiwan,” Lin said. “We’re Aborigines, we’re born with that identity. I don’t know why it’s a complicated issue that needs to be dealt with very carefully.”
“How do you administratively decide someone’s ethnicity?” he asked.
Another Pingpu activist, Jason Pan (潘紀揚), of the Pazeh Tribe, echoed Lin’s ideas.
“The government had no problem recognizing the ethnic identities of other Aborigines, of Tibetans, Mongolians and Hakka — but when it comes to Pingpu Aborigines, it becomes a complicated issue that needs to be further researched, and that requires social consensus,” Pan said. “If we Pingpu do not fight for our own rights, we will eventually become culturally extinct.”
Lin said that the Presidential Office called them “Pingpu” in the letter and admitted that they had their own culture and history, “so how can you say that these people do not exist?”
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Taiwan’s three major international carriers are increasing booking fees, with EVA Airways having already increased the charge to US$28 per flight segment from US$25, while China Airlines (CAL) and Starlux Airlines are set to follow suit. Booking fees are charged by airlines through a global distribution system (GDS) and passed on to passengers. Carriers that apply the fees include CAL, EVA, Starlux and Tigerair Taiwan. A GDS is a computerized network operated by a company that connects airlines with travel agents and ticketing platforms, allowing reservations to be made and processed in real time. Major players include Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport. EVA Air began
The Ministry of National Defense yesterday reported the return of large-scale Chinese air force activities after their unexplained absence for more than two weeks, which had prompted speculation regarding Beijing’s motives. China usually sends fighter jets, drones and other military aircraft around the nation on a daily basis. Interruptions to such routine are generally caused by bad weather. The Ministry of National Defense said it had detected 26 Chinese military aircraft in the Taiwan Strait over the previous 24 hours. It last reported that many aircraft on Feb. 25, when it spotted 30 aircraft, saying Beijing was carrying out another “joint combat
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
RSS