Several Aboriginal rights advocates yesterday lashed out at President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for not keeping his promise to implement Aboriginal autonomy, for delaying reconstruction for victims of Typhoon Morakot and for his government’s inability to root out ethnic discrimination.
“Ma has been in power for three years now, and for us Aborigines, the past three years have been three years of suffering,” Icyang Parod, director of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of Aboriginal Affairs, told a press conference in Taipei.
“Aboriginal autonomy has not become a reality as Ma promised during the presidential campaign, ethnic discrimination against Aborigines remains and victims of Typhoon Morakot are still homeless,” Icyang said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
By discrimination, Icyang was referring to the recent controversy sparked by former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Central Standing Committee member Liao Wan-lung’s (廖萬隆) suggestion to a Central Standing Committee meeting that intermarriage between Aborigines and non-Aborigines be discouraged to maintain the “purity” of Aboriginal blood. Liao caused more outrage when he tried to clarify his remark by later telling reporters that most Aborigines are “mongrels.”
Aborgines were also upset in March by a Mainland Affairs Council-sponsored TV ad that referred to them as pa-nga, an Amis word for penis or “loose women.”
Taiwan Aboriginal Society president Tibusungu’e Vayayana said Ma’s administraion failed to respect Aboriginal rights to the environment and to autonomy. He also complained about the government’s slow progress in reconstruction of mostly Aboriginal regions devastated by Morakot.
In Alishan Township (阿里山), Chiayi County, where he comes from, “23 bridges were damaged during the storm and only one was rebuilt — by a non-governmental organization,” he said.
Government officials had promised to allocate government land for reconstruction projects, but “when the reconstruction process really started, the government unilaterally changed its mind and decided to take private land for reconstruction instead, without having discussed it with us,” he said.
“The government under Ma’s leadership is a disaster just like Morakot, only it’s one that’s been around for three years,” he said.
Hsu Cheng-wan (徐成丸), a chieftain of the Sakiraya tribe in Hualien County, said he voted for Ma in 2008, but “I would say that we should stand united and boycott Ma in the next election.”
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift