The Council of Indigenous Peoples’ rules delineating traditional Aboriginal lands will be subjected to a legislative review, New Power Party (NPP) lawmakers said yesterday, vowing that the NPP caucus would veto any council attempts to directly implement the rules.
The regulations were to be “filed for reference” with the Legislative Yuan, but the NPP caucus plans to force a substantive review in the Internal Administration Committee, NPP Legislator Kawlo Iyun Pacidal, an Amis, said at a news conference with protesters who have camped on Ketagalan Boulevard for more than a week.
“If we feel that an executive order could be illegal, we can ask that it be handed to a committee for possible revision,” Pacidal said.
The regulations would undermine Aboriginal culture by ruling out any right of “informed consent” for the development of private land nearby, she said.
“This is about social justice, because we are a minority and at the bottom of society, so a lot of information will not even reach us unless we are given the right of informed consent,” she said, adding that numerous hotel and resort projects are under way throughout Hualien and Taitung counties, where many Aborigines reside.
“The reality is that regulations constricting the use of private property are a matter of course in other areas, but why does that suddenly change when it comes to Aboriginal rights?” NPP Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) said, adding that the council was wrong to cite concerns about restricting property rights in excluding privately owned land from the regulation’s definition of “traditional land.”
“There are all sorts of regulations that govern what can be done with private land, including environmental review, special approval for constructing housing on agricultural land and protection for historical architecture,” he said.
While the NPP has no seats on the Internal Administration Committee, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Sra Kacaw, an Amis who is on the committee, said he would push for revisions, criticizing the council for revising its initial draft, which he said did not restrict the designation of “traditional land” to public land.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
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A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
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