Aboriginal groups put pressure on Tsai

HISTORIC:President Tsai Ing-wen is tomorrow expected to issue the first official government apology to Taiwan’s Aboriginal community for historical injustices

By Abraham Gerber  /  Staff reporter

Aborigines from Hualien County protest at Liberty Square in Taipei yesterday.

Photo provided by The Self Help Association Demanding the Restoration of Aboriginal hunting rights

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should make concrete promises to pass Aboriginal transitional justice legislation and protect hunting and other rights, Aboriginal activists said yesterday, as hundreds of protesters descended on Taipei, days prior to a widely anticipated official apology to Aborigines tomorrow.

Tsai has promised to issue an official apology to Aborigines for historic injustices on the nation’s Aboriginal Day.

Details of a planned Aboriginal transitional justice commission overseen by the Presidential Office are also to be announced, with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) earlier this month promising to pass legislation to implement the Aboriginal Basic Act (原住民族基本法), including an Aboriginal self-rule act, language development act, land and sea rights act and recognition for Pingpu (平埔) Aborigines.

The party’s legislative caucus has blocked efforts by Aboriginal legislators to include Aborigines in transitional justice legislation, instead focusing on Martial Law era abuses.

More than 70 activists from the Aboriginal Transitional Justice Alliance protested outside the Legislative Yuan for several hours yesterday morning before marching to Ketagalan Boulevard shortly after noon to camp out within sight of the Presidential Office Building, calling for education, hunting and land rights, while singing a victory chant to the tune of a Christian hymn.

“We demand that President Tsai not just make empty promises,” said alliance president Kumu Hacyo, an independent Tainan city councilor who caucuses with the DPP.

Hacyo called on Tsai to promise passage of an Aboriginal transitional justice act, outline a concrete timetable for passage of other legislation and recognize indigenous sovereignty by establishing a communication platform between national government and Aboriginal communities.

Hacyo also called for the establishment of a parallel Aboriginal transitional justice commission under the Executive Yuan — mirroring the transitional justice commission targeting Martial Law era abuses — adding that a commission established under the Presidential Office would be largely symbolic without real authority to force cooperation from government agencies.

Hundreds of protesters, mainly from Hualien County’s Taroko community, marched from the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to Ketagalan Boulevard, waving mock hunting rifles and shouting for revisions to the National Park Act (國家公園法) to recognize traditional hunting rights.

“Everything that flies, crawls or swims is protected except flying squirrels and wild boars, which completely ignores ecological balance and our hunting rights,” Sediq community member Logim said, calling for traditional territories to be removed from the jurisdiction of national parks.

Legal Aid Foundation Taitung Branch executive secretary Jewel Chen (陳采邑) called for the passage of an Aboriginal hunting act to clarify Aboriginal rights, adding that unrealistic hunting restrictions and vague hunting rifle rules have led to the conviction of more than 355 Aborigines since the passage of the Aboriginal Basic Act (原住民族基本法), which guarantees traditional hunting rights.

“Current laws are in opposition to Aborigines’ hunting lifestyle, requiring complicated applications and restricting hunting to specific rituals. Any other hunting, even hunting purely for self-use with no profit or sales involved, is subject to a minimum six-month sentence under the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保護法),” she said, adding that judges typically directly sentence hunting violations without holding a court hearing, denying the accused the right to invoke the Aboriginal Basic Act.

“The definition of the ‘self-made hunting rifle’ which Aborigines are required to use is also extremely vague, which creates a situation in which every judge has their own definition,” she said. “The law also does not have any specific rules for bullets, leading to convictions even if the gun used is legal — as if Aborigines are supposed to throw their guns at animals.”

“The government treats Aboriginal hunting rights like a welfare benefit,” said Association for Taiwan Indigenous People’s Policy president Yapasuyongu Akuyana, who is a member of the Tsou community, at a separate conference on Aboriginal transitional justice at the Legislative Yuan.

He said that implementation of the Aboriginal Basic Act had been hobbled by its confinement within the constitutional structure of the Republic of China, leading to restrictive interpretations of the act’s right guarantees even when enabling legislation for hunting and other rights was passed.

“As long as we do not consider indigenous sovereignty, any talk of implementing the basic law is a groundless fantasy,” he said, adding that implementing Aboriginal transitional justice was crucial to establishing such sovereignty.

National Dong Hwa University Department of Ethnic Relations and Culture professor Shih Cheng-feng (施正鋒) said an apology without restoration of indigenous sovereign rights would amount to a “political show.”

“The DPP’s objective is to further the establishment of a Taiwanese national identity comprised of different ethnic groups, but while that is important, if the policy stops there, Aborigines will still be left in a position of being dominated,” he said.

To Combat Climate Change, Restore Land Ownership To Indiginous Peoples

TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE, RESTORE

LAND OWNERSHIP 

TO INDIGENOUS 

PEOPLES

by Elizabeth WalshJune 15, 2016

Even though Indigenous Peoples make up just 5 percent of the world’s population, their ancestral territories collectively span across 65 percent of the Earth’s surface. However, just 10 percent of that land is within their legal control. This discrepancy creates a significant gap in securing the human rights and political, social, and economic needs of the world’s 5000 distinct Indigenous Peoples and Nations.

Despite their immense cultural and linguistic diversity, Indigenous Peoples developed their ways of life in much the same way. By maintaining an intimate relationship with the land for generations on end, the languages, livelihoods, customs, and cultures became inextricably linked to that same land. Some refer to this relationship as a bio-cultural heritage.

What happens when Indigenous Peoples have no legal control of their land? Their way of living faces indefinite threat, they are subjected to greater degrees of poverty, and the land itself is more likely to come under control of corporations and governments that allow resource extraction projects and other development schemes that pollute waterways, contribute to carbon emissions and cause massive deforestation (not to mention displacement of the peoples who live there). In some instances, these impacts lead to a complete ecosystem collapse.

In sharp contrast to this, studies show that Indigenous Peoples are the most effective managers and protectors of their territories which they view as a partner, a provider, and a living being. This perspective carries tangible results: in the Amazon, for example, the deforestation rate is eleven times lower in community owned forests.

Just last November, LandMark, the “global platform of Indigenous and community lands,” made a groundbreaking effort to place data about community owned and indigenous owned land into a map. In that online interactive map, LandMark is gradually revealing which areas of the Earth’s surface are held by Indigenous Peoples, whether or not the land is formally recognized by a state, or if it is in the process of being recognized. Its features also enable users to see the percentage of a country’s total land area, and what amount is held by Indigenous Peoples, as well as the strength of their legal claims to such lands.

This data stands in sharp contrast to how we typically think of land and territory. The international agenda with regards to climate change assumes that actors, priorities, and solutions are effectively negotiated and implemented by approaching the issue from the perspective of nation-states. For example, interests are defined in terms of a country’s needs: what are India’s needs, or what are obstacles to American cooperation? These needs are then augmented into macro-level concerns that reinforce the nation-state mentality: the European approach to climate change might involve one set of actions, while vulnerable members of the global south have a different set of needs. Not only does this kind of rhetoric reinforce the idea of the nation-state, but it also strengthens the very needs of the nation-state, which are almost always economic in nature. The “global south” is not just a geographic term; it carries with it connotations that this group of countries is less economically developed, making their needs at the international policy level “different” than those who are already industrialized and therefore more economically empowered to make reductions in carbon emissions. In dividing needs, interests, actors, and policy objectives along these lines, the global community leaves little room for non-state actors to effectively argue for non-economic interests, including interests in climate change mitigation and reversal. This line of thinking also assumes that Indigenous Peoples’ needs are sufficiently represented by nation states, or ignores the fact that they are not.

This system of international policy making disempowers Indigenous Peoples in a variety of political arenas, but especially in matters of climate change. International state actors discuss climate change in terms of reductions in economic development, environmental devastation, and disaster management, which are linked to financial costs. Indigenous Peoples are similarly concerned with environmental devastation and disaster management, but these issues are part of a larger problem in which their ways of life are threatened. Traditional knowledge and ways of life cannot necessarily be recovered in another geographic area, and certainly not through other strengths of the global economic market. Nor, for that matter, can they be secured through the UN's Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs).

LandMark map: National level percentage of formally recognized Indigenous and Community lands

LandMark’s map allows us to understand indigenous and community land rights in the context of nation-state boundaries. In looking at a map that indicates which percentage of these lands are adequately protected, we can better understand how the interests politicians pursue at the international level do not match up geographically with the Earth’s reality. To return to the statistic first introduced in this article, 65 percent of the Earth’s land area is held by Indigenous Peoples communities and nations. Put another way, 65 percent of the Earth is arguably inadequately and unfairly represented by those with the power to decide policies that affect all of us. How can a country that protects only 5 percent of indigenous lands fairly claim to represent the needs of those people?

This matters, because Indigenous Peoples are powerful stakeholders and advocates in the fight against climate change. As studies by the World Resources Institute show, communities around the world have official or legal rights to a minimum of 513 million hectares of forests (one-eighth of the world’s total, which equates to 37.7 billion tonnes of carbon). These areas see far lower decimation of the trees and plant life that help to mitigate carbon emissions elsewhere in the world. The picture below of indigenous land boundaries in Brazil illustrates the clear difference in land that is managed and legally controlled by Indigenous Peoples versus land that is subject to economic interests and government control.

Screenshot from Life Mosaic's Video Series "Territories of Life"

In order to effectively empower Indigenous Peoples to be advocates for the environment and allies in the struggle to combat climate change, governments need to protect their rights to the land without providing oil, gas, and mining concessions. Indigenous Peoples need to have secure community-based rights with longevity; further studies show that concession rights and individual titles lead to community fragmentation and insufficiently protect the people and lands that they manage. But these efforts are only effective at the national level; thus, the international community needs to be made aware of how powerful an impact Indigenous Peoples have on mitigating climate change. The international community also needs to understand and respond to the gap in negotiation and policy making: that is, it needs to evolve to include a space for Indigenous Peoples to advocate for their needs and contribute to solutions. This means structuring policy making in non-national terms, and pushing for non-state actors and members of civil society to become meaningful participants in the process.

Tsai’s Aboriginal rights policy disputed

REDUNDANT:Non-partisan Solidarity Union’s May Chin asked why a commission was being established when the president’s white paper on Aboriginal policy would have sufficed

By Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter

Legislators yesterday questioned President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) approach to restoring Aboriginal rights to promote transitional justice.

Non-partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅), who is half Atayal, expressed frustration with Council of Indigenous Peoples Minister Icyang Parod, saying that a remark by Parod showed he was not serious about seeking transitional justice on behalf of Aborigines.

At an earlier meeting of the legislature’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee, Parod had told Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Wellington Ku (顧立雄) that he would help put together a truth and reconciliation commission under the Presidential Office to streamline efforts to restore land traditionally belonging to Aborigines and correct what he said were skewed historic perspectives about Aborigines.

Showing photographs of Parod leading protests against the government’s seizure of Aboriginal territories before taking on the council post, Chin said Parod was conflicted by his dual identity as an Amis activist and an official, and therefore not being entirely honest, as she questioned whether the proposed commission would have any administrative power.

“Do you think we Aborigines will mistake a job at the Presidential Office for real power? We are not stupid,” Chin said.

She questioned whether establishing the commission under the Presidential Office means the opinions of commission members from the agencies involved in pushing Aboriginal affairs would be neglected and, if so, asked why Tsai proposed the establishment of such a commission and the transitional justice bill when her white paper on Aboriginal policy would have sufficed.

Chin demanded that Parod provisionally announce the scope of traditional Aboriginal territories no later than the end of his term, to prevent excessive development plans such as the Miramar Resort.

Meanwhile, DPP Legislator Chou Chun-mi (周春米) asked Executive Yuan Secretary-General Chen Mei-ling (陳美伶) whether she thinks that establishing a commission under Tsai or an “Aboriginal land investigation commission” under the Control Yuan, as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Cheng Tian-tsai (鄭天財) suggested, was a better option to restore Aboriginal land.

Aborigines given landowner papers to traditional land

Staff writer, with CNA

The Kaohsiung City Government on Saturday presented certificates of land ownership to 60 Aboriginal households to enable them to recover the rights they once held to traditional tribal lands.

Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) handed out the certificates for 110 plots covering 100 hectares during a ceremony held for the Aboriginal households.

Over the past 70 years, many of the lands reserved for Aborigines that were passed down from their ancestors have been administered by the National Property Administration or the Forestry Bureau, Chen said.

Aboriginal communities previously could only apply to reclaim lands to which they were entitled if they could produce official documents, Chen added.

This made it almost impossible to reclaim their lands, because most people had not kept official land documents required by the government, Chen said.

However, after joint efforts by the central and local governments, the ownership rights of Aboriginal lands can now be restored.

The city government is still reviewing records on the ownership claims by Aborigines to 17 plots covering about 50 hectares, Chen said.

The last time Kaohsiung issued certificates of land ownership to Aborigines was in 1973.

Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) on Saturday said that his municipal government was accelerating administrative procedures to help return traditional lands to their owners.

The Taichung City Government said it has issued certificates of land ownership for 289 plots to their Aboriginal owners.

New Taipei City Indigenous Peoples Department Director Dongi Alin (楊馨怡) said the city has been working hard to help Aborigines get their land ownership rights back.

Dongi Alin also suggested that the Council of Indigenous Peoples should scrap a regulation that stipulates Aborigines must use land for five years before they can acquire ownership of it.

Groups call on US to support Taiwanese sovereignty

ATONEMENT:Washington is under an obligation to support Taiwan because former US leaders handed the nation to Chiang Kai-shek’s regime, TAA president Lin Yi-hsien said

By Jason Pan  /  Staff reporter

Representatives from a coalition of pro-Taiwan groups assembled in front of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday to call on the US government to assist Taiwan in achieving statehood in the long-term and asked the US to flex its muscles to deter moves by China to pressure president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to mention the so-called “1992 consensus” in her inauguration address.

At the rally, organized by the Taiwan Autonomy Alliance, about 30 protesters expressed concern over the inauguration speech and asked the US government to comply with provisions in the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), especially regarding its obligation to maintain peace and security for Taiwan, and to protect the rights of Taiwanese.

The group included members of the Taiwanese National Party, the 908 Taiwan Republic Campaign, the Taiwan National Federation of 228 Massacre Victims Association and the Nation-Building Forum.

The demonstration was met with a police cordon.

Leaders from the Taiwan Autonomy Alliance asked to present a petition to representatives of the institute, but were told officials were attending meetings.

The protesters said they would not leave and threatened to stage a sit-in. After some negotiations, an AIT representative came out to accept the letter.

Taiwan Autonomy Alliance (TAA) president Lin Yi-hsien (林義憲) said China has been actively applying political and economic pressure against Tsai, trying to force her to bring up the so-called “1992 consensus” at her inaugural address on May 20.

The “1992 consensus,” a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted to making up in 2000, refers to a tacit understanding between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese government that both sides of the Strait acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.

“We call on the US government to flex its muscles and use its political influence to stop China from threatening Tsai and Taiwanese into acquiescing to the ‘1992 consensus,’ because it downgrades Taiwan’s status as an autonomous government and is a ploy to subjugate Taiwan as part of China, which we are not,” Lin said.

Alliance chairman Brian Qo (吳崑松) said the groups want the AIT to relay the message to Washington, asking the US government to issue a statement to declare its resolve to abide by the TRA to protect Taiwan’s peace and security and to warn China against making any military threats against the nation.

“We request the US government recognize our right to autonomy, that Taiwanese want to build a nation and have normalized international relationships with other nations. Right now, we have the KMT’s illegitimate ‘Republic of China’ authority ruling over us,” Qo said.

“We want to end this fraudulent regime, to replace it with a real parliament and governing body so we can have good people and good government, and engage with the world as an autonomous, independent nation,” Qo added.

Lin said that Washington is under an obligation, because US leaders handed Taiwan to Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) regime and his KMT junta at the end of World War II, which led to five decades of martial law and brutal oppression, adding that the US must address this historic misdeed by helping Taiwan build up the nation.

Taiwan Declaration seeks protection of Aborigines’ culture

Staff writer, with CNA

Academics, experts, Aborigines and farmers from Taiwan and eight other nations yesterday signed the Taiwan Declaration in Taipei, which seeks to protect Aboriginal cultures and rejects genetically modified (GM) crops.

Climate change has had an adverse effect on Aborigines’ culture and livelihood around the world, because they can no longer grow their traditional crops, said Lin Yih-ren (林益仁), chair of the Graduate Institute of Humanities in Medicine at Taipei Medical University.

The declaration, signed on the first day of a two-day inaugural meeting of the International Network of Indigenous Ecological Farmers (INIEF) at the university, said that to prevent possible environmental harm that could be caused by GM crops, Aborigines will not plant such crops, but seek the help of farmers and international seed banks to find suitable replacements to be grown on their land.

It also calls for support from governments and international organizations for the INIEF’s efforts to tackle challenges facing Aborigines, and welcomes Aborigines, farmers’ groups and other organizations to join the network.

The participants urged government leaders, including president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who is to take office on May 20, to introduce progressive policies for Aborigines and protect their ecosystem.

Several participants of yesterday’s meeting have taken part in a series of workshops held in four Aboriginal communities around Taiwan since March 11 and exchanged their experiences with farming and environmental protection issues.

Kuo Kuan-ying loses pension request

‘HIGH-CLASS MAINLANDER’:The ministry cited procedural flaws in the government’s hiring of the former GIO official, nullifying his employment and denying him a pension

By Huang Pang-ping  /  Staff reporter

Kuo Kuan-ying leaves the offices of the Taiwan Provincial Government in Nantou County on July 15, 2014.

Photo: Chen Fong-li, Taipei Times

The Ministry of Civil Service yesterday rejected former Taiwan Provincial Government employee Kuo Kuan-ying’s (郭冠英) application for a monthly pension of NT$60,000.

Kuo, who retired on July 15, 2014, previously served in the now-defunct Government Information Office (GIO) in Toronto, Canada. He was dismissed from the post in 2009 after making derogatory remarks about ethnic Taiwanese in several articles published under his pseudonym, Fan Lan-chin (范蘭欽).

These included commentaries referring to himself as a “high-class Mainlander,” while calling ethnic Taiwanese taibazi (台巴子, Taiwanese rednecks). He also wrote that China should suppress Taiwanese instead of granting them political freedom once it has taken Taiwan by force.

In March 2014, Kuo was hired by the provincial government just a few months before reaching retirement age. The move was widely criticized, with many calling it a scheme for Kuo to be entitled to a monthly pension of more than NT$60,000.

The Control Yuan twice censured the provincial government for procedural flaws in its recruitment of Kuo, including failing to hold interviews for other potential job applicants.

The Ministry of Civil Service responded by demanding that the provincial government issue an amendment to the Administrative Procedure Act (行政程序法).

The provincial government argued that the administrative act was not applicable to Kuo’s employment and sought the counsel of the Ministry of Justice, which, on Saturday last week, sent a second interpretation to the provincial government confirming that the act applies to Kuo’s case.

The Ministry of Civil Service yesterday said the employment of Kuo by the provincial government in March 2014 has been annulled and, therefore, his application for retirement benefits would also be denied.

However, since Kuo did work for the provincial government, the pay that he received during his employment there would not be recalled.

Examination Yuan Secretary-General Lee Jih-shyuan (李繼玄), quoting Minister of Civil Service Chang Che-shen (張哲琛), said that the provincial government had committed procedural flaws when it hired Kuo, but they cannot be corrected now that Kuo has retired.

The only correction the ministry can make is to deny Kuo’s application for a pension, Lee said.

Kuo could request another review of his case by another government agency and, if that fails, he could appeal the ruling to the Taipei High Administrative Court, Lee said.

The Ministry of Civil Service said that Kuo’s past deeds, comments and the amount of pension requested had no bearing on its decision on the case.

Rather, it was the Control Yuan’s decision to nullify Kuo’s employment, it said.

The provincial government said it would refer the official document on the ministry’s decision to Kuo, while protesting against the ministry’s contention that its hiring procedure was flawed.

Kuo could not be reached at press time last night.

Additional reporting by Chen Feng-li