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.
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was sentenced to six months in prison, commutable to a fine, by the New Taipei District Court today for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) in a case linked to an alleged draft-dodging scheme. Wang allegedly paid NT$3.6 million (US$114,380) to an illegal group to help him evade mandatory military service through falsified medical documents, prosecutors said. He transferred the funds to Chen Chih-ming (陳志明), the alleged mastermind of a draft-evasion ring, although he lost contact with him as he was already in detention on fraud charges, they said. Chen is accused of helping a
SECURITY: Starlink owner Elon Musk has taken pro-Beijing positions, and allowing pro-China companies to control Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is risky, a legislator said Starlink was reluctant to offer services in Taiwan because of the nation’s extremely high penetration rates in 4G and 5G services, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday. The ministry made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which reviewed amendments to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法). Article 36 bans foreigners from holding more than 49 percent of shares in public telecommunications networks, while shares foreigners directly and indirectly hold are also capped at 60 percent of the total, unless specified otherwise by law. The amendments, sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
RSS