The Hualien County Government and Taroko National Park authorities are forcing the Truku community to violate Aboriginal tradition by refusing to issue hunting permits, Truku leaders in Hualien’s Sioulin Township (秀林) said.
The Truku community has a population of 30,000 nationwide, and has applied to authorities for a permit to hunt in Taroko National Park for a Thanksgiving Day feast, a Truku holiday officially recognized by the Executive Yuan, which requires 12 days of hunting leading up to Oct. 15.
Truku leaders said the community in Sioulin is Taiwan’s largest and had plans to revive the traditional hunt this year.
Four villages had applied to hunt in the park because the Truku sacred code of conduct, gaya,, requires each village to hunt in its own ancestral territory, they said.
However, the hunting permit request filed by the Sioulin community in July was rejected by the Hualien County Government and Taroko National Park’s administration center on grounds that the National Park Act (國家公園法) forbids hunting and fishing in national parks.
Truku elders said that hunters from the four villages could not use other hunting grounds because gayaforbids it in order to avoid dangers of hunting in unfamiliar terrain and potential fighting between communities.
Truku officials and representatives say they feared the rejection signified that the government had lost interest in passing proposed amendments to the act to allow Aborigines to hunt for cultural and religious reasons.
Sioulin Mayor Lee Chun-feng (李春風) said that hunting is a part of Truku cultural heritage protected by the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act (原住民基本法).
He called on the legislature to amend the National Park Act as soon as possible.
Township Representative Kuo Hsin-yung (郭新勇) said the Truku community has been reasonable in asking to hunt only for 12 days and would not hunt endangered species.
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