Elders from the Paiwan people on Friday said that they were not satisfied a day after the Supreme Court of Tokyo rejected a lower court’s ruling that Japanese broadcaster NHK should compensate a Paiwan woman for defamation.
The ruling is final.
In 2013, the Tokyo High Court ruled that NHK should compensate Kao Hsu Yueh-mei (高許月妹) NT$290,000 for using “discriminatory wording” to describe indigenous people, including her father, who was shown in a picture in a report.
NHK produced a special program on the history of Japan’s colonization of Taiwan, which was aired on April 5, 2009.
The program said Aborigines took part in the Japan-British Exhibition in London in 1910, but the photograph of them shown on the program was captioned “human menagerie,” referring to Aboriginies as a “special animal for display.”
The father of Kao Hsu, who lives in a village in Pingtung County’s Mutan Township (牡丹), took part in the exhibition and was in the photo.
Claiming that NHK had defamed her father, Kao Hsu filed the lawsuit.
Village Warden Lee Te-fu (李德福) said the whole village was angry about the “insult” against Aborigines.
Chen Ching-fu (陳清福), 86, who served as interpreter when NHK interviewed Kao Hsu, said that referring to indigenous people as a “special animal” is derogatory.
Chen said that he would wait to see the Supreme Court of Tokyo’s verdict to decide how to respond.
Kao Hsu’s daughter, Kao Hsiang-mei (高香梅), said the ruling is frustrating.
As her mother is old, she said she would let Chen and Lee decide how to handle the case.
In giving its ruling, the Supreme Court of Tokyo said viewers would not think that the father of the plaintiff was being treated like an animal in the zoo just because NHK used the caption.
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