A L L I A N C E O F T A I W A N A B O R I G I N E S
5th Fl. 7 Cheng Kuong Rd. Sec 2
Yung Ho. Taiwan
Tel: (02) 9286120
Fax: (02) 9286120
REPORT OF ALLIANCE OF TAIWAN ABORIGINES
PRESENTATION TO THE UNITED NATIONS
WORKING GROUP ON INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS
FROM 19th to 30th OF JULY
GENEVA (SWITZERLAND)
Name of Organization: Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines
Address: 5F; 7 Cheng Kuong 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 and Periodicity: Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines
of Publication Taipei, July 16, 1993
Report of 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. And 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
the Han-People who have the qualification of humanitarianism. We foresee
that Taiwan Aborigines have suffered for a long time the unequal
treatments from the economic exploitation, social discrimination,
political oppression and negligence of culture. Taiwan Aborigines are
really encountering on a crisis of the racial extermination. This
Alliance is a social movement group who strives for the 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, Holland and Spain invaded Taiwan with
government-backed 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) THE CHENG RULE AND THE MANCHU COLONIAL PERIOD (1661-1895)
Cheng Chen-Kong 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) THE 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 down 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,
canons, 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 the 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 1950 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 THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN TAIWAN:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1) HUMAN RIGHTS AND KMT POLICIES
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 is therefore, we have no right to self-
determination and no collective rights as a group. The basic Policy Of
the KMT government toward the Indigenous Peoples is one of artificial
assimilation, aiming at the complete effacement of 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 our traditional
right to the land and our traditional sovereignty.
2) POLITICAL RIGHTS
Taiwan's government has deprived the Indigenous Peoples of our
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 in specific
and the Han people in general. Therefore, 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 really, they are wielded to destroy the Indigenous
Peoples as ethnic groups and take way our 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 by 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 Amis 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 (ON DEC. 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 (ON JAN. 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 (ON JAN. 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 letter 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 (ON FEB./APR. 1988/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 (ON AUG. 1988/SEP. 1989)
The most of our ancestral lands have been occupied by the brutal force
of State for 40 years. Foreseeing that lands are the most important
resources of the Indigenous People, we have developed a series of
campaigns to fight for our lost lands and to protect the land right by
our traditional custom laws. And the fight is still going in the
Parliament.
5) ANTI-WU-FENG MYTH (ON AUG. 1985/FROM SEP. TO DEC. 1987)
Wu-Feng is a faked 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 to delete the Wu-Feng Myth
from the elementary school textbooks.
7) ANTI-STATE-PARK-ESTABLISHMENT IN THE ABORIGINAL LANDS (ON MAY. 1993)
We have hold 2 press conference in the Parliament to emphasized 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 ISSUES ON SELF-DETERMINATION AND TO PROPOSE THE
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE ACT IN NEW-CONSTITUTION-DRAFTING MOVEMENT (ON DEC.
1992-PRESENT)
Foreseeing 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 TAIWAN'S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
TRIBE POPULATION
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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
-- Via DLG Pro v1.0
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/ Director Center For World Indigenous Studies /
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