Report
of the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous
Populations
August 1993
19 - 30 July 1993
Geneva, Switzerland
Name of Organization: Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines
Address: 5F; 7 Cheng Kuang Rd., Sec. 2, Yung-Ho, Taipei, Taiwan
Tel: (02) 928 6120
Fax: (02) 928 6120
Name of President: Mao Lung-chang
Aboriginal Name: Panu Chapmumu
Title: Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines
City of Publication: Taipei, July 16, 1993
Report of the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines in the World
Conference
on Human Rights, Vienna, 14-25 June, 1993
FOREWORD
Greetings to the representatives of Indigenous People from
all over the World, and also to the participants from NEG. I would like to thank all of
You for sharing our experience on the issues of Aborigines to each other in this
Conference.
INTRODUCTION
Now I will give you a brief introduction to my Organization
-- Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines (ATA). ATA was organized and established on December 29,
1984 by a group of Taiwan Aborigines, missionaries and Han people who have the
qualification of humanitarianism. We foresee that Taiwan Aborigines have suffered for a
long time unequal treatment from economic exploitation, social discrimination, political
oppression and negligence of culture. Taiwan Aborigines are truly encountering a crisis of
racial extermination. This Alliance is a social movement that strives for economic
benefits, political rights and social position.
Taiwan's total area is 35,981 square kilometers: 394 km in
length and 144 km in width. Surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, its neighbors are China to
the west, the Philippines to the south, and Japan to the north.
Before 1620, only Indigenous Peoples occupied Taiwan. What
follows is a summary of the colonial governments that have ruled Taiwan from 1624 to 1992:
1) The Dutch and Spanish Colonial Period (1624-1661)
In 1624 and 1626, respectively, the Dutch and Spaniards
invaded Taiwan backed by government forces. They sought to subjugate the Indigenous
Peoples with their superior material power and their fervor of religious indoctrination.
During this time, some of the Pinpu People lost their autonomy, but the vast majority of
other Indigenous Communities remained unaffected.
2) Cheng Rule and the Manchu Colonial Period (1661-1895)
Cheng Chen-kung waged war against the Dutch in a struggle
to lay claim
to Taiwan, and his subsequent victory ensured his position as colonizer. At the same time,
the Chinese rulers were non-Han Manchus, another ethnic minority within China. During
Cheng's rule, his forces occupied the western plains of Taiwan and a small part of the
mountainous areas. Attempting to protect their land and tribal territorial lines, the
Indigenous Peoples had countless conflicts with the Han, who were gradually invading the
territory of the Indigenous Peoples and assimilating them. In 1885, without obtaining the
consent of the people of Taiwan, the Manchu regime annexed Taiwan. In 1895, the mountains
and the Eastern plains were still under the effective control of the Indigenous Peoples.
3) Japanese Colonial Period (1895-1945)
In 1895, the Manchu government lost the Sino-Japanese War
and signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, ceding Taiwan to Japan. The Japanese government
began to exploit Taiwan's economic resources through a systematic, capitalistic style of
management; it was during this period that the subsistence lifestyle of the Indigenous
Peoples began to crumble. In order to obtain control over Taiwan's forests, mineral
resources, water and tourism potential, the Japanese rulers contained the Indigenous
Peoples in "Mountain Reservations" thus slashing the traditional territory of
2,000,000 hectares to 24,000 hectares, to which the Indigenous Peoples had only
utilization rights but could not claim permanent possession. In order to squash resistance
from the Indigenous Peoples, the Japanese colonial government launched a large number of
massacres. During the "Five-Year-Expedition" between 1910 and 1914, 10,000
Taroko People were massacred. In 1930, in the Wushe Rebellion, the Japanese attacked six
Taroko Villages with airplanes, cannons, machine guns and chemical weapons and massacred
virtually all the men, women and children of the Villages. In order to assimilate the
Indigenous Peoples, the Japanese government encouraged the Indigenous Peoples to use
Japanese names, and forced children to speak Japanese under their compulsory elementary
school program. It was during this period that the traditional political, economic,
cultural, and social systems of the Indigenous Peoples began to collapse.
4) The Nationalist (KMT) Colonial Period (1949-Present)
After its defeat in World War II, Japan accepted the San
Francisco
Treaty and its stipulation that Japan renounce its rights to "Formosa and the
Pescadores" on September 8, 1951, ending 50 years of colonial occupation. In 1949,
the Nationalist (KMT) militarist regime, after its defeat by the Communist government,
fled to Taiwan. In order to consolidate its rule, the Nationalist government massacred
thousands of Indigenous, Minan, and Hakka intellectuals in the early 1950s and imposed
martial law, which was not lifted until 1987. In its policies toward the Indigenous
Peoples, the KMT is the direct heir of its totalitarian and colonial Japanese predecessor,
and indeed surpasses the latter in planning and implementing its policies. More discussion
will be devoted to this subject in the next section.
After this short introduction to the history of Taiwan's
colonial governments, and before proceeding, we, as members of Taiwan's Indigenous
Peoples, have the obligation to inform the governments and Indigenous Peoples
representatives who are attending this World Conference, as well as members of the United
Nations, of the fact that, as the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) has
never ruled Taiwan. Taiwan belongs to the 20 million people of the island -- Taiwan does
not belong to China.
THE CURRENT HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN
TAIWAN:
1) Human Rights and KMT Policy
The government that rules Taiwan today is named the
"Republic of
China", known as the KMT regime by both Indigenous activists and the opposition
party. The KMT Constitution, implemented in 1947, was legislated in China and therefore
grants us no right to self-determination and no collective rights as a group. The basic
policy of the KMT government towards the Indigenous Peoples is one of artificial
assimilation, aiming at the complete effacement from the Indigenous Peoples' consciousness
of their own history, culture and language. Taiwan's government does not recognize the
ethnic status of the tribes and our historical position in Taiwan; it has deprived us of
our traditional right to the land and our traditional sovereignty.
2) Political Rights
Taiwan's government has deprived the Indigenous Peoples of
their
political, cultural, economic, educational and social autonomy. In terms of political
participation, it has designed a system of "protective quotas", symbolically
handing the Indigenous Peoples a few seats in Taiwan's legislative bodies. In the
parliament, where the majority rules, the rights and welfare of the Indigenous Peoples are
completely at the mercy of the Han majority, a fact which renders our quotas little more
than political ornament. The parliament can give no real expression to the will of the
Indigenous Peoples. The rights of political participation for the Indigenous Peoples are
manipulated by the KMT regime specifically and the Han people in general. Taiwan's
political system is entirely under the control of the KMT and the Han people; Indigenous
Peoples have absolutely no voice, let alone autonomy, in such a political system.
3) Legal Rights
When Indigenous Peoples have asserted their original
rights, colonial governments have always been quick to negate these rights with the laws
that they themselves have created. To this day, Indigenous Peoples have no legal status;
many laws claim to protect the interests of Indigenous Peoples when, in reality, they are
wielded to destroy the Indigenous Peoples as ethnic groups and take way their rights.
In 1987, the KMT government lifted martial law, and put in
its place "National Security Law", which continues to impose many restrictions
upon the mountain areas inhabited by Indigenous Peoples. Martial Law continues to rule
these areas, Nothing illustrates the pervasive ignorance and oppression prevalent in this
legal system more accurately than the complete absence of any multicultural consideration
in Han law. All the laws of Taiwan are legislated according to the values of the Han
people. The common laws of the Indigenous Peoples are neither incorporated into nor
acknowledged by the laws of this land. The legal system, only serves the Han people at the
expense of the Indigenous Peoples.
4) Land Ownership and Economic Rights
In recent years, under the current government's policy of
massive development of the areas in question, demand and exploitation has occurred on
several fronts: forested land has been assigned to the management of the Bureau of
Forestry, land with mining potential has been claimed as national property; areas noted
for their natural beauty and tourism potential have been designated national parks; and
the Ministry of Defense has appropriated vast tracts of land from the Indigenous Peoples
under the pretext of national security. The last pieces of land upon which the Aborigines
rely for their survival have been taken away, and their consent was never sought in the
process. In order to build national parks, industrial zones, and reservoirs, the
government forcibly relocated Aborigine tribes such as Fu-Shih village of Shou-Lin County,
Hualien, in the case of the Taroko National Park; Mei-Shan Village of Taoyuan County,
Kaohsiung, in the case of the Yu-Shan National Park; the ancestral graves of the Bunun
tribe in Tong-Pu Village, Shin-Yi County, Nantou; the village within the Ho-Ping cement
industrial district in Shou-Lin county, Hualien; and the Hao-Cha village in Wu-Tai county,
Pin- Tung, in the case of Wu-Tai Reservoir; to name only a few. After government policy is
formulated, the Indigenous People involved have absolutely no channel through which to
express their opinion, indeed lacking the very right to do so. In a word, virtually all
land with development value has been occupied and exploited.
Every year Indigenous Peoples from various parts of the
island, uninformed of or unable to obey these laws, are punished legally and often must
serve 2-3 year prison sentences. Deprived of their resources and lands, Indigenous Peoples
can no longer take out a living in their traditional tribal villages. Large numbers of
those who are capable of physical labor have flowed toward the industrial towns and cities
to become laborers.
According to the official statistics in 1989, 48.8% of the
Indigenous People are agricultural workers, while the rest work in Non-agricultural
Professions. The vast majority of the Indigenous Peoples who become city-dwellers enter
labor-intensive jobs that require little or no technical training and tend to be low in
both status and pay. The men are primarily workers in wood and steel manufacturing, truck
drivers, miners, and deep- sea fishermen, while most women become electronic and textile
workers. These industries are among the most labor-exploitative industries in Taiwan. Many
Indigenous workers frequently find that their pay is withheld without reason. They have
neither labor insurance nor a pension, and are constantly threatened with unemployment.
5) Cultural and Educational Rights
The Indigenous Peoples were not only unable to reclaim
their ancestral names, but under the assimilationist policy of the Taiwan government, they
were denied even the right to register their citizen identification with their traditional
names. The family organization of each Indigenous People, once perfectly clearly described
by our traditional system of names, has completely disappeared.
The Cultural Gardens of the Indigenous Peoples, designed as
a museum, is being built and managed by the KMT government. It is being built upon land
bought at a price far below market value from the local Indigenous Population, and its
commercial attraction is to put existing Indigenous Cultures on display for tourist
consumption.
For the last forty years, children have been forbidden to
speak their own language in the schools, let alone learn that language as part of their
education. All the textbooks for elementary and middle schools are homogenized and edited
by the government, and thus are devoid of any references to the culture, history and
ethnic consciousness of the Indigenous Peoples. Only 0.3% of the Indigenous Peoples had
received a college education in 1989, while 5.8% of the Han population already had college
degrees in 1978. All in all, the educational system systematically discriminates against
the children of the Indigenous People.
6) Social Rights
In 1978, the government, in a blatant deception of the Yami
people of the island of Lan-yu, announced the construction of a military harbor and widely
publicized the employment opportunities such a project would bring. The unsuspecting Yamis
joined the construction project willingly, only to find out after its completion that the
project was actually a nuclear waste dump. Currently Taiwan has three nuclear plants --
the construction of a fourth one is pending -- and all of Taiwan's nuclear waste is dumped
on Lan-yu. Since this site has reached full capacity, the government is now planning
expansion of the site. The Yami people are putting up stiff opposition, and the conflict
is still unresolved. Without garnering the benefits of nuclear power, the Yami are yet
tricked into shouldering the immense risk of a nuclear disaster - this is a classic case
of racial discrimination and deserves international censure.
Last of all, a significant portion of Indigenous girls and
young women have absolutely no human rights whatsoever. Bought and sold as child
prostitutes, they are in every sense the victims of an established system of slavery with
which the entire Han society is complicitious. Aged from 9 to 18, these girls are
estimated to account for 20% of the child and adolescent prostitutes in Taiwan, a
prosperous market that is part of the vast and ubiquitous Taiwan industry which thrives
upon the sexual exploitation of women. Given hormonal shots, beaten, tortured, and
repeatedly raped on a daily basis, these girls live entirely outside
modern society and the rudiments of human rights by which such a society supposedly
defines itself. The survival of our race are reduced to commodities and denied their right
to existence as human beings.
THE ACTIVITIES OF TAIWAN ABORIGINAL MOVEMENT
From 1984, there are a series of campaigns raised by
Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines (ATA) on the following issues:
1) Name Correction Movement (December 1984 and May 1992)
We raised the issue to the public of deciding who are the
Aborigines of
Taiwan, also developed the campaign to request to be called Aborigines in the official
documents and in general usage, instead of the discriminative slangs like mountain people
and mountain fellows.
2) Save the Young Aboriginal Women in Prostitution (January
1988)
Because there are so many young Indigenous women were sold
to the city as prostitutes by the illegal bargainers, the women organization and ATA
developed the campaign to raise the public concerns and to push our government to face the
problems of the Human Right violations and social- economic inequality to the Indigenous
People.
3) Recover Our Aboriginal Name System (January 1987)
The name system of Taiwan Aborigines and Han people are
very different, though that, the government forced us to change our traditional one and
accept the latter 40 years ago. Because the confusion of the name system, it causes that
there are different last names in the same brotherhood. So we push our government to
return our Aboriginal name to be used in the national affairs and in the society.
4) Get Nuclear Waste out of Lan-yu (February/April 1988 and
May 1993)
The government ignored the living rights of the Indigenous
People in Lan-yu, and began to dump the wastes of the nuclear power plants to their land
10 years ago. And the thing is still going on. We have developed several local campaigns
to protest, also seeked the concerns from the International Indigenous People. So we now
propose to draft a brief declaration under the name of NGO to accuse of the evil of our
government.
5) Return My Lands (August 1988 and September 1989)
Most of our ancestral lands have been occupied by the
brutal force of the state for 40 years. Considering that land is the most important
resource of the Indigenous People, we have developed a series of campaigns to fight for
our lost lands and to protect land rights through our traditional customs and laws. The
fight is still going in the Parliament.
5) Anti-Wu Feng Myth (August 1985 and September - December
1987)
Wu Feng is a mythical hero invented by the Han People to
distort the humanity of the Indigenous People. To eliminate the discrimination and the
racism, we request the Dept. of Education delete the Wu Feng Myth from the elementary
school textbooks.
7) Movement Against Establishment of State Parks in
Aboriginal Lands (May 1993)
We have held two press conferences in the Parliament to
emphasize that the Indigenous People have their own rights to develop their lands and
their cultures without the intervention of State power. So we also push our senators to
cut budget of State-Park-Establishments.
8) To raise the issue of self-determination and to propose
the participation of Indigenous Peoples in the drafting of a new constitution (December
1992-present)
Considering the awareness among the Taiwan Aborigines on
their land right, their cultures and their humanity, and also the tendency of
International Indigenous People Movements. Especially this year 1993 is the year of
universal Indigenous Peoples, we think that it is the time to focus our future on the
rights of living and development of the Indigenous Peoples, and to push ourself in a more
radical way. So we, ATA is ready to develop a series of campaigns on this issue in the
near future.
CHALLENGES
The Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines faces a number of
Challenges during 1993:
1) The challenge of allowing the Aboriginal Original Name,
the Aborigines shall have the right to decide who is Aborigines.
2) The challenge to upgrade authorities of autonomy and
competent administrative Authorities of Aborigines Affairs to the Central Class.
3) The challenge of allowing the Aboriginal People to use
their own original name in the National Affairs and the Society.
4) The challenge of the Declaration on the rights of Asian
Indigenous/Tribal Peoples: We are of the Land.
5) The challenge of the Declaration on the rights of Asian
Indigenous/Tribal Peoples: We assert that we know what self- determining communities are.
We demand that all recognize that we have always been self-determining.
CONCLUSION
We, Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines believe and have
continued to participate with the Taiwan Aborigines in our quest for freedom, just, and
peace. We give thanks for the support and encouragement of many friends around the world.
APPENDIX
The distribution of population amongst Taiwan Aborigines
Taroko 30,000
Amis 129,220
Paiwan 60,434
Tayal 48,957
Bunun 38,267
Puyuma 8,132
Tsou 5,797
Saisiat 4,194
Thao 248
Rukai 8,007
Yami 4,335
Total Population: 337,342
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