Aborigines might be allowed to hunt non-endangered animals for ritualistic or religious purposes during traditional festivals, Minister of the Interior Chen Wei-zen (陳威仁) said on Wednesday, adding that the ministry is considering relaxing regulations on national parks to implement the plan.
Chen made the remarks in response to media queries about the case of Bunun hunter Tama Talum, also known as Wang Kuang-lu (王光祿), whose prison sentence for killing a wild boar and a Formosan serow in 2013 was upheld by the Supreme Court in October last year.
The issue was highlighted by a protest by representatives of 14 Aboriginal communities on Tuesday.
Fifty-six-year-old Wang was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for breaking laws on gun control and wild animal conservation.
Wang told police that he found the gun in the mountains and that he was hunting lean meat for his ailing 92-year-old mother, as the food products sold in “plains markets” was too fatty for her.
His conviction triggered protests by members of the Bunun and other Aboriginal communities, who said the law was too harsh against Aborigines for whom hunting is a traditional way of life.
Chen said that the ministry is in the process of drafting a proposal to amend the National Park Act (國家公園法), that would permit Aborigines to hunt in national parks for ritualistic or religious purposes, on the condition that their prey is not under imminent threat of extinction and is not in limited numbers.
The proposed amendments are to be designed to be more respectful to Aborigineal culture, modeled after the Forestry Act’s (森林法) protections of Aboriginal rights, he added.
To curtail farmland losses, the National Land Planning Act (國土計劃法) is to zone the nation’s land into four categories — agricultural development areas, national reserve areas, marine resource areas and urban development areas — and allow governmental construction projects for dams, airports, highways and other infrastructure only in designated urban-development areas, Chen said.
When asked to comment on whether the National Land Planning Act would authorize the government to demolish illegal hostels and hotels, such as those found near Nantou County’s Cingjing Farm (清境農場), Construction and Planning Agency Director-General Hsu Wun-long (許文龍) said legal research by his agency is pending the act’s promulgation.
Additional reporting by CNA
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000
RSS