National Taiwan University (NTU) must return Bunun ancestral remains it excavated in Hualien County in the 1960s and issue an official apology after ignoring years of demands for restitution, NTU students said yesterday.
On Wednesday, residents of Kunuan Village (also known as Bahuan Village, 馬遠) in Hualien’s Wanjung Township (萬榮) protested in front of the university in Taipei to demand the return of the remains, but were denied entry onto the campus and scuffled with police.
NTU students were at Wednesday’s protest and returned for another rally yesterday.
Photo: CNA
The village since 2017 has made repeated demands for the university to return the remains, as well as erect a monument and start a foundation to compensate the families whose ancestors’ remains were taken.
Kating Adaw Langasan, a member of the university’s Absoundtrack student association, said that NTU had failed to give villagers their due respect and even blocked its entrance to them.
University statements about the issue have highlighted the demands for compensation, seeking to portray the indigenous villagers as being motivated by greed, Kating Adaw Langasan said, adding that the demands were not baseless and the university should not say they are merely a demand for compensation.
Club member Langui Ispalidav said that the people whose ancestral spirits had been taken from their lands are still hurting from the injustice.
The university must face its mistakes, issue a public apology to the village and make plans for the speedy return of the remains, Langui Ispalidav said.
NTU Anti-Aborigine Discrimination Club president Sera Fangis Pacidal said that recent events, including the university’s reaction to the protest, showed that it was unwilling to respect the rights of indigenous people or face its past.
NTU must step up efforts to create an ethnicity equality committee, and promote courses and materials that would help non-indigenous people understand and respect indigenous people, Sera Fangis Pacidal said.
NTU College of Liberal Arts Student Association president Chu Yu-hsien (朱育賢) said that as a member of the Han ethnicity, he wished to apologize to indigenous students, adding that the campus and Taiwanese society — which is predominantly Han — could not understand the needs of other ethnicities.
The university said that the protesters had not registered their rally with the Taipei City Government and the officers on duty were not armed.
The scuffle between police officers and protestors occurred as the protesters pushed forward after failing to arrive at a consensus with university staff, the university said.
The gates were closed to protect faculty and students, it said, adding that police had stopped protesting students from entering because they could not identify them.
The university pledged to continue dialogue with the authorities on the issue.
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