Fearing that the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) legislative caucus could throw its support behind a version of the Aboriginal autonomy bill proposed by the Executive Yuan, Aboriginal groups yesterday held another protest at the legislature to call for “genuine autonomy.”
In a play staged to open their protest, an activist playing the role of the Executive Yuan forcefully tried to dress another activist — playing the role of Aborigines — in a suit that was not the right size, while saying: “I’m trying to educate you.”
The skit was meant to symbolize the government trying to push through an autonomy bill that is not welcomed by Aborigines.
“The KMT has never apologized or shown regret for its inappropriate rule of the nation’s Aborigines,” former Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) minister Yohani Isqaqavut, of the Bunun tribe, told reporters.
“Moreover, in such an age of democracy, it’s [KMT] still trying to push through an outdated Aboriginal autonomy bill,” he said. “The only meaningful Aboriginal autonomy bill is one that matches the ideas stated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and under the framework of both the Constitution and the Aboriginal Basic Act [原住民族基本法].”
Hsiao Shih-huei (蕭世暉) of the Indigenous Peoples’ Action Coalition Taiwan said that while the autonomy law was supposed to be a subordinate law under the framework of the Aboriginal Basic Act, “the Executive Yuan’s version would make the autonomy bill something beyond the act.”
Shih Cheng-feng (施正鋒), a professor at National Donghwa University’s Graduate Institute of Ethnic Development, said the government’s draft autonomy bill was an empty vessel.
“First, autonomous Aboriginal regions wouldn’t have the right to land, so it’s an empty autonomy; second, autonomous Aboriginal regions are not given legislative and judicial powers, making autonomous governments only the executive branch of the central government; and third, autonomous regions aren’t granted the right to a share of the budgetary pie, meaning that they would have to beg the central government for money,” Shih said. “The government’s version of Aboriginal autonomy is a meaningless one.”
He said he would prefer to be called a “non-Aborigine” or “mixed” rather than a “Han” person, claiming he was “ashamed of my own ethnic background.”
In a press release, the council voiced support for the Executive Yuan’s version of the autonomy bill, saying it complied with everything in the act and urged the legislature to pass it as soon as possible.
“If the law is not good enough, we can always amend it. If the system is not good enough, we can always change it,” Council of Indigenous Peoples Minister Sun Ta-chuan (孫大川) said in the statement. “However, if we do nothing but continue to argue, we [Aborigines] will always remain a disadvantaged group.”
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