Aboriginal protesters were evicted from their campsite on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei yesterday following repeated conflicts with the police over blocking road lanes during their 100-day occupation.
More than 100 police officers arrived at the site during yesterday’s torrential rains, surrounding protesters’ tents with metal roadblocks before forcing protestors outside, spending several hours methodically demolishing the site.
A handful of demonstrators affiliated with the Aboriginal Transitional Justice Classroom have been occupying the strip of road facing the Presidential Office Building since February to protest newly announced guidelines for demarcating the “traditional areas” within which Aboriginal communities would be able to reject further development.
Photo: Cheng Hung-ta, Taipei Times
While government guidelines only call for demarcating public lands, protesters maintain that private land should also be included.
“I really do not understand why the government chose to evict us today when there is so much flooding to attend to — is there really that much hatred between us and [President] Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)?” Aboriginal protester Nabu, a Bunun, told a news conference outside police roadblocks as the final pile of debris was being loaded into trucks for disposal.
“We will keep fighting and continue to live on the road,” singer-activist Panai Kusui, an Amis, said.
During the occupation, police had repeatedly cleared the road, only to see protesters expand from their sidewalk tents, using plastic chairs, painted rocks, a dugout canoe and other objects to block multiple lanes.
“We hope the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] will stop using violence before it runs off a cliff,” said New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Kawlo Iyun Pacidal, an Amis, who joined the protesters.
The clearing of the site made it difficult to believe there was any chance demarcation guidelines would be revised and land rights returned, she said.
NPP Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) criticized the DPP for dragging its feet in passing promised amendments to the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) to improve protesters’ rights.
Police said that the protesters were removed on the grounds that they had failed to apply for usage rights of the road.
OVERHAUL NEEDED: The government should improve its agricultural processing capabilities and expand to new markets to limit its reliance on China, an expert said China’s ban on Taiwanese pineapples was “unsurprising,” and Taiwan should have years ago altered its produce export strategies and target customers, experts said. China on Friday abruptly suspended imports of pineapples from Taiwan, saying that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful biological entities” on the fruit. Calling it an “unfriendly” move, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said that 99.79 percent of the pineapples sent to China since last year have met China’s import standards. Chiao Chun (焦鈞), the author of Fruits and Politics — A Recollection of Cross-strait Agricultural Interaction Over the Past Decade (水果政治學：兩岸農業交流十年回顧與展望), said that China’s announcement is clearly targeting
The Council of Agriculture yesterday signed a Taiwan-Australia Agricultural Cooperation Implementation clause to open a new export market for the nation’s pineapple crop. The clause is an addition to existing cooperation measures, it said. China on Friday last week abruptly announced that it would suspend pineapple imports from Taiwan starting on Monday, on grounds that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful organisms” in shipments of the fruit. The public and private sectors have since joined hands to purchase the local fruit to help the nation’s pineapple farmers. Canberra has requested that all pineapples for export to Australia have their crown buds removed,
DECADES OF INFLUENCE: Over the past 20 years, China has made inroads with Aborigines, funding political campaigns and trips, a legislator said Lawmakers have called on the National Security Bureau to investigate claims of pervasive Chinese influence among Aboriginal communities. Legislators pointed to a surge in communist propaganda and Chinese-funded projects over the past few years, which they say are aimed at infiltrating and buying political influence among Aboriginal communities. “China has for decades carried out wide-ranging ‘united front’ tactics and propaganda campaigns targeting Aborigines,” said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ying (陳瑩), a member of the Puyuma community in Taitung County. “Now, they are influencing elections for local councilors and village chiefs, offering money for candidates to mount their campaigns, and to
DISSATISFACTION? If the referendums collect more than 700,000 signatures each, they would have gotten the most signatures in the shortest time, the party said The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) two referendum petitions — one on banning the importation of pork with traces of ractopamine and the other on holding referendums on the same day as national elections — had as of Thursday gathered 691,398 and 674,497 signatures respectively, the party said yesterday. If the petitions collect more than 700,000 signatures apiece, they would have garnered the most signatures in the shortest time since the Referendum Act (公民投票法) was amended in 2017, party officials said. The KMT proposed the “anti-ractopamine pork” or “food safety” referendum just days after President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) announcement on Aug. 28 last
RSS