A Supreme Court collegial panel on Thursday suspended an ongoing legal debate on Tama Talum’s case, saying it is seeking constitutional interpretations on regulations governing the use of weapons and wildlife conservation in light of their impact on Aboriginal customs and traditions.
Tama Talum, a 57-year-old Bunun Aborigine, was arrested in Taitung in August 2013 for allegedly violating the Act Controlling Guns, Knives and Ammunition (槍砲彈藥刀械管制條例) and the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法).
The lower courts had ruled that he should be jailed for three-and-a-half years.
According to the panel, hunting is a centuries-old Aboriginal custom and modern laws should not be imposed on Aborigines without prior consultation or negotiations.
Aborigines have their own customs and practices in regard to people, land and mountains, including all flora and fauna, the panel said.
The restrictions placed on Aborigines by modern laws are stifling their rights as stated in the Constitution and the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act (原住民基本法), the panel said.
The Act Controlling Guns, Knives and Ammunition and the Wildlife Conservation Act disregard the lifestyle and traditions of Aborigines, it said.
The first act places strict regulations on the kinds of guns Aborigines can use for hunting, while the second act states that Aborigines can only hunt for traditional ceremonies, teaching purposes, academic research or when there is a spike in certain animals’ populations.
Neither act has been amended to reflect constitutional amendments and the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act, nor do the laws reflect the spirit of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights.
While the Republic of China had signed both covenants in 1967, they were not ratified until 2009.
The request to deposit the instrument of ratification was rejected by the UN on the grounds that Taiwan is not a UN member.
The Taitung District Prosecutors’ Office has also postponed the prison sentence for Talum, who was supposed to begin serving his sentence in December 2014, until the Supreme Court rules on the case.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching