Animal rights advocates yesterday staged a silent protest in Hsinchu County’s Sinpu Township (新埔) against what they called the inhumane treatment of “divine pigs,” usually the center-stage attraction for the Yimin Festival (義民祭).
The protest was launched after a petition by the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan failed to convince the Hsinchu County Government to ban the competition, in which pigs are fattened and skinned for the ritual.
“Our protest is not targeting specific ethnic groups or temples, but the competition itself,” group deputy executive director Chen Yu-min (陳玉敏) said.
Photo: Huang Mei-chu, Taipei Times
The Yimin Festival, a major Hakka cultural event, has been tarnished by the divine pig competition, which has been continued by multiple temples on the grounds that it is an “integral part of Hakka culture,” the group said, adding that a 2016 Ministry of Culture report found that the competition does not contribute to the festival being an important part of Hakka culture and heritage.
Since as early as 2011, prominent Hakka people — including musician Lin Sheng-xiang (林生祥), writer Chung Chao-cheng (鍾肇政) and professor Lee Mao-sheng (李茂生) — have all said that equating the divine pig competition with Hakka culture is “a great affront to the Hakka people.”
Over the past 17 years, the group has called for one particular temple in Sinpu to stop rewarding behavior that abuses animals.
Of the 1,600 temples that used to hold divine pig competitions, only 11 — including the one in Sinpu — have insisted on continuing the tradition, the organization said.
Appeals have been made to the Hakka Affairs Council, the Council of Agriculture and other animal rights-related groups to stop or cancel the divine pig competition altogether, it said.
Religion and local beliefs should not be a shield for animal abuse, it added.
The competition has become for-profit, as people are hiring professionals to fatten their pigs and the professionals have adopted abusive methods to force-feed the pigs, such as tube-feeding, the group said.
Owner and buyers — fixated on the prize money — are completely oblivious to the emotional stress and physical discomfort of the pigs, many of which have difficulty standing or walking due to their obesity, it said.
The very action seeking to honor yiminye (義民爺), the deified figure representing Qing Dynasty militias that died in service of the empire, is disgracing them, it added.
The temples have said that the competitions are launched by the faithful “of their own accord.”
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