Puyuma people from Taitung County’s Katatipul Community yesterday traveled to Taipei to protest a solar power installation project planned on their land, demanding that the government terminate the project unless local Aborigines consent.
Dressed in traditional costumes, nearly 20 Puyuma protested in front of the Executive Yuan compound, holding Chinese-language banners that read: “The land is my mother, not your cash dispenser” and “defend sovereignty and revoke the project.”
The county government in January last year announced bidding for the development project, which is to cover 226 hectares and estimated to be worth NT$8 billion (US$259.6 million), said Chen Cheng-tsung (陳政宗), convener of the group.
Puyuma ancestors settled in the area in the 16th century, but they were not involved in the project’s planning process, as required by Article 21 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law (原住民族基本法), Chen said.
The development area is in the community’s domain and partly overlaps the Jhihben Wetlands (知本溼地), community member Lu Hung-wen (呂宏文) said.
The community does not oppose solar power development, but the government should consult local Aborigines’ opinions before opening the area for development, Lu said.
They protested yesterday instead of earlier because it took community members time to understand the project and the law, Lu said.
While the county government had convened meetings to explain the project, they were mostly one-way policy promotion events, Environmental Rights Foundation chief executive Tu Yu-wen (涂又文) said, urging the central government to push local officials to improve communication with Aborigines as required by law.
Also at the protest were nuclear power proponents Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修) and Liao Yen-peng (廖彥朋), who said that the government should not sacrifice Aboriginal rights and wetland ecology to promote its “nuclear-free homeland.”
However, community members rejected their support.
Most community members do not know the advocates of nuclear power and were baffled by their uninvited appearance, Lu said, adding that Huang and Liao should not co-opt the demands of Aborigines.
The protest is not about supporting or opposing green energy development, but about consulting Aborigines’ opinions before exploiting their land, Indigenous Youth Front member Savungaz Valincinan said.
The Executive Yuan received the Puyuma appeal and said it would relay the information to the agency in charge.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS