Aboriginal rights activists and politicians yesterday clashed with police as they tried to get into the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus office to deliver a petition voicing their opposition to the Executive Yuan’s draft Aboriginal autonomy bill.
“[KMT caucus whip] Lin Yi-shih (林益世) come out! Lin Yi-shih, come out!” dozens of Aborigines shouted as they protested outside the KMT’s caucus office.
They were eager to get into the office to deliver a petition to voice their opposition to the draft bill, which they consider a “fake autonomy bill” as it gives Aborigines neither a budgetary increase nor the right to land and natural resources.
Although the caucus office eventually allowed them in, no one was there to take their petition and several protestors with KMT membership threatened to withdraw from the party.
Things went more smoothly when they visited the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus office, as DPP Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) received them and promised to stand with them on the autonomy issue.
Outside the Legislative Yuan, there were hundreds of other protestors.
“We are here to defend our rights,” former DPP legislator Payen Talu of the Atayal tribe told the crowd that represented all 14 officially recognized Aboriginal tribes in the country.
“What good would an autonomy bill do us if it will not give us the right to fully manage our own traditional domains and natural resources within — as the Aboriginal Basic Act [原住民族基本法] promises — and will not allow autonomous regions to receive budgets directly from the central government?” Payen said.
Payen and the demonstrators were upset because the Executive Yuan’s version of the draft bill keeps major decision-making powers in the hands of existing central and local government organizations, leaving mostly culture-related policy-making power to Aboriginal autonomous regions.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS