Taiwan Church News 3317 Edition September 21 - 27, 2015 Church Ministry Ethnic Autonomy Could Not Be Established On Legal Colonialism Reported by Chiu Kuo-rong Who can represent the indigenous to speak in Taiwan congress? The answer to this problem is related with a legalconflict or hegemony between current Taiwan constitution and the Indigenous Peoples Basic Laws. In the evening on 17 September, Indigenous Research and Development Center of National Taiwan Normal University(NTNU) held a seminar on the conflict and solution of the rights of the indigenous. Three reknown tribal leader and scholars were invited to deliver their analysis and solutions, including Mr Yilan Minkinuan - vice chairman of Taiwan First People Party, Professor Pao Cheng-hao of Tamkang University and Professor Wong Ming-huei of NTNU. Professor Pao pointed out that current congress politics divided the indigenous congressmen into two sections:mountain areas and plain areas. Such gerrymandering exacerbated the fragile solidarity of the indigenous society, facilitating the candidates of the populous ethnic tribes getting elected much more easier than those tribes with fewer populace. As a result, the voters of Amis, Paiwan and Tayal tribes turned out to cast their votes in 2012 congress election was apparently 1.9 times higher than other indigenous tribes. These advantageous tribes was therefore more powerful and eloquent in the Taiwan congress. This extant phenomenon, due to gerrymandering, was evidently against the spirit of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Laws. Mr Yilan Minkinuan expressed that the autonomy demanded by the indigenous was the ethnics autonomy, not a local autonomy. The gerrymandering of the election boundaries into mountain and plain areas was not suitable for ethnics autonomy, said Yilan Minkinuan, instead each tribe should have their own representative in the congress to speak for them. In addition, the level of the tribal council should be established on the same level like Taiwan congress and financed through her proportional populace and inhabited land, said Yilan Minkinuan. Professor Wong Ming-huei concluded that, comparing with other countries, Taiwan government did make moremeasures to protect the interests of the indigenous. But, the mind sets of the government were still caught by a colonial complex, especially when the indigenous were always mocked by officials: "How many more you still want us to offer?" Wong said, there was no possibility to practice an ethnics independence, if the identity politics of the indigenous wanted both financial coverage from the state and the ethnics autonomy simultaneously. "And this seems a paradoxical state of the indigenous: Either we carry on depending on the state to sustain our trap in colonial exploitation, or we have to find our way of ethnics autonomy?", challenged Wong. Translated by Peter Wolfe |