The Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (MTAC), during a review of its budget in yesterday’s meeting of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee, was severely criticized for what was described as its snubbing of resolutions made by the committee that required the commission to stop using “minorities” to describe Taiwan’s Aborigines and to provide quarterly reports on alleged human rights violations committed by the Chinese government in Tibet.
The committee, presided over by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) slashed the commission’s NT$125 million (US$3.95 million) budget for this year by NT$8.4 million, including allotments for a rare earth metal investigation in Inner Mongolia, and for exchanges between Taiwan, Mongolian and Tibetan groups overseas.
Another NT$2 million of the commission’s Tibetan Affairs Office has been frozen, as proposed by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), until a report on human rights violations in Tibet that was demanded of the MTAC by the committee as early as the end of 2013 is provided.
Chen said that even though the resolution requesting the quarterly reports of alleged violations was made very long ago, “no such report has so far been seen from the commission.”
MTAC Minister Jaclyn Tsai (蔡玉玲) said that it is the kind of report “that could not be managed to be published by [the commission] alone.”
“You [Tsai] are the highest official in charge of the related affairs. Who else do you need to ask for such permission? The Chinese Communist Party?” Chen said in response.
Chen also said that while the MTAC spent NT$1.15 million to hold a cross-strait conference on ‘ethnic groups issues and policies’ in 2013 — to which Chinese officials and academics were invited — “the commission had spent only NT$40,000 for a conference on self-immolation protests by Tibetans.”
The commission said that it was not able to invite officials from the Tibetan government in exile or other relevant human rights activists.
In reponse, DPP Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) accused MTAC officials of “failing to reach out to local Tibetan groups, such as the Taiwan Friends of Tibet, for a possible network.”
Yao asked Tsai, who was slated to attend the flag-raising ceremony on Ketagalan Boulevard today, to state the MTAC’s support for Tibetans’ human rights with the local advocacy group after the ceremony.
The use of the term “ethnic minorities” to describe Aborigines in the MTAC’s budget report was criticized by DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋), who emphasized that it has long been resolved by the committee — supported by the Council of Indigenous Peoples — that the term, which is used by the Chinese government to refer to groups including Mongolians and Tibetans in China, is not to be used to describe Taiwan’s Aboriginal groups.
It was not the first time that the commission has been criticized for this error, Lee said.
Meanwhile, the committee also resolved during the meeting yesterday that the Central Election Commission must provide a report within three months on the possibility of allowing the public to make video recordings in the audience area at ballot stations during vote counting.
The agency’s prohibition of the taking of photographs and recording videos during vote-counting spawned controversy before the Nov. 29 nine-in-one municipal elections.
Chen said that since there are no relevant regulations on the practices in the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), the injunction by the agency is legally baseless.
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