Hundreds of farmers yesterday rallied in front of the Executive Yuan in Taipei to protest the Council of Indigenous Peoples “forcibly removing” them from their homes and “confiscating” their farmland.
Wu Tien-yu (吳天祐), chairman of the Taiwan Association for the Rights of Non-Aboriginal Residents in Mountain Indigenous Townships, led the rally, which was attended by members of the Association for the Rights of Nantou County Residents and farmers’ groups nationwide.
Wu accused the council of political persecution by launching lawsuits against the members of his organization and affiliated farmers’ groups, saying that it had unfairly labeled them as “intruding outsiders illegally occupying Aboriginal territory.”
“Many of our members have lived in the mountains for several generations, cultivating crops for their livelihoods. Most have legally obtained use of their land, and have paid land leases and other fees,” Wu said.
“The government has done much to protect the rights of Aboriginal people, but what about non-Aboriginal farmers? Our rights are being violated, but no one speaks up for us. We are farmers and residents in these townships, so we must be treated fairly as well, because we too are citizens of this country,” he said.
The groups brought Taoist priests to conduct a traditional ceremony involving prayer and chanting to seek divine help for their cause.
The farmers presented petitions to the Executive Yuan and the council demanding that laws be amended to permit the sale, ownership and leasing of the lands they cultivate, and to legalize the land ownership of farmers cultivating forest land.
They also demanded eligibility for farmers’ insurance and subsidies for agricultural damage from typhoons and other natural disasters.
Wu presented reports and figures showing that there are 70,000 “Han farmers” and non-Aboriginal residents with household registry in Aboriginal districts.
When their family members are included, it totals about 200,000 people, Wu said.
“The government and the council must not ignore our existence. [We] have been cultivating and taking up agriculture in Aboriginal areas for generations,” he added.
Other group members said that the council has taken up litigation to force them out on alleged breaches of the Soil and Water Conservation Act (水土保持法), the Forestry Act (森林法) and other laws, citing a case from last year in which an 82-year-old woman was indicted and later sentenced to three months in prison.
“She had only built a simple hut as her residence and grew some fruit trees on designated Aboriginal land. This old lady had been living in this place for more than 50 years,” Wu said.
“The court convicted her for breaching the Soil and Water Conservation Act, but the law was enacted in 1994 and exempted residents who had already been residing in the affected districts, so the prosecution in the case was unjustified,” he added.
The council in a statement said that the Regulations on Development and Management of the Lands Reserved for Indigenous Peoples (原住民保留地開發管理辦法) take into consideration the land use rights of Aborigines and non-Aborigines, and “as long as non-Aboriginal residents do not contravene the law or breach leasing contracts, they can continue with current land use... The government has no plans to take back all the lands as the farmers’ groups have claimed.”
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