Dozens of Aborigines — mostly residents of Kaohsiung County — along with Aboriginal rights activists, yesterday staged a demonstration outside the Executive Yuan, urging it to come up with a solution to maintain autonomy for Aboriginal townships after the merger or upgrade of several cities and counties into special municipalities next month.
“No to the takeover [of Aboriginal townships]! Autonomy for Aboriginal townships!” dozens of demonstrators shouted as they stood in pouring rain.
“This is something we expressed our concern about long before the approval to create the five new special municipalities, yet the government has not come up with a solution despite its promise to do so,” Taiwan Aboriginal Action Alliance secretary-general Omi Wilang said.
“This shows that the government doesn’t care about Aborigines and doesn’t really intend to allow Aboriginal autonomy even though the Executive Yuan passed the Aboriginal autonomy bill,” Wilang added.
The Aboriginal communities and activists are anxious because when the cities and counties are merged or upgraded to become special municipalities on Dec. 25, Aboriginal townships will become districts in the municipalities, elected township councils will be abolished and district heads will be appointed by the mayors without any prerequisites, according to the law.
At the moment, the law stipulates that Aboriginal township mayors must be elected and that only Aborigines can serve as Aboriginal township mayors
The Aboriginal townships that would be affected by the administrative upgrades include Wulai Township (烏來) in Taipei County, Heping Township (和平) in Taichung County and Namasiya (那瑪夏), Taoyuan (桃源) and Maolin (茂林) townships in Kaohsiung County.
On Dec. 25, Taipei County is to become Sinbei City, Taichung City and County are to be merged and become Greater Taichung, Tainan City and County will be merged and become Greater Tainan and Kaohsiung City and County will be merged to become Greater Kaohsiung.
Convener of the action alliance, Lituan Takeludun, a Bunun resident of Namasiya Township, said that the three Aboriginal townships in Kaohsiung County would reject any unelected district leaders, and they are opposed to disbanding their township councils.
“The government should not say they support Aboriginal autonomy, while actually abolishing what partial autonomy is already in place,” he said.
Lituan added that both -Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), the Democratic Progressive Party Greater Kaohsiung mayoral candidate, and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) mayoral candidate Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) have voiced support for the Aborigines’ demands, but independent mayoral candidate Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) did not respond to their request for support.
Council of Indigenous Peoples Minister Sun Ta-chuang (孫大川) said he would meet with 10 of the demonstrators in private inside the Executive Yuan, but the demonstrators declined, saying that if Sun wanted to meet them, he should meet them in public.
As the two sides could not reach agreement, the council only sent Chief Secretary Chen Cheng-chia (陳成家) to receive the petition from the demonstrators.
Three Taiwanese airlines have prohibited passengers from packing Bluetooth earbuds and their charger cases in checked luggage. EVA Air and Uni Air said that Bluetooth earbuds and charger cases are categorized as portable electronic devices, which should be switched off if they are placed in checked luggage based on international aviation safety regulations. They must not be in standby or sleep mode. However, as charging would continue when earbuds are placed in the charger cases, which would contravene international aviation regulations, their cases must be carried as hand luggage, they said. Tigerair Taiwan said that earbud charger cases are equipped
Foreign travelers entering Taiwan on a short layover via Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport are receiving NT$600 gift vouchers from yesterday, the Tourism Administration said, adding that it hopes the incentive would boost tourism consumption at the airport. The program, which allows travelers holding non-Taiwan passports who enter the country during a layover of up to 24 hours to claim a voucher, aims to promote attractions at the airport, the agency said in a statement on Friday. To participate, travelers must sign up on the campaign Web site, the agency said. They can then present their passport and boarding pass for their connecting international
UNILATERAL MOVES: Officials have raised concerns that Beijing could try to exert economic control over Kinmen in a key development plan next year The Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) yesterday said that China has so far failed to provide any information about a new airport expected to open next year that is less than 10km from a Taiwanese airport, raising flight safety concerns. Xiamen Xiangan International Airport is only about 3km at its closest point from the islands in Kinmen County — the scene of on-off fighting during the Cold War — and construction work can be seen and heard clearly from the Taiwan side. In a written statement sent to Reuters, the CAA said that airports close to each other need detailed advanced
The age requirement for commercial pilots and airline transport pilots is to be lowered by two years, to 18 and 21 years respectively, to expand the pool of pilots in accordance with international standards, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications announced today. The changes are part of amendments to articles 93, 119 and 121 of the Regulations Governing Licenses and Ratings for Airmen (航空人員檢定給證管理規則). The amendments take into account age requirements for aviation personnel certification in the Convention on International Civil Aviation and EU’s aviation safety regulations, as well as the practical needs of managing aviation personnel licensing, the ministry said. The ministry
RSS