Taiwan Church News

3329 Edition

December 14 - 20, 2015

Headline News

An Extraordinary Appeal Is Filed For An Aboriginal Hunter's Traditional Hunting Due to Waves Of Protests

Reported by Chiu Kuo-rong and Lin Yi-ying

Due to aboriginal and human rights groups' waves of protests, including the demonstration at Council ofIndigenous Peoples(CIP) and burning signal smokes before the Supreme Prosecutor Office, an aboriginal Bunun hunter - Talum, who was charged by Taitung District Prosecutor Office in 2013 and sentenced by the court to serve three-and-a-half years in prison for weapon (shotgun) possession and poaching the Formosan serows and Reeves' muntjacs for his nonagenarian mother's diet, is surprisingly filed an extraordinary appeal and temporarily suspended his prison term which should be executed from December 15.

Lawyers of Talum expressed that the laws of the Republic of China is established chronically after the traditional cultures practiced by the aboriginal peoples over millenniums. The authorities of Taiwan government should respect the hunting culture and habits of the aboriginal peoples, and the autonomy of hunting should be given back to Talum, lawyers reminded.

On December 11, PCT Bunun Presbytery General Affairs Office(BPGAO) delivered a resolution indicating that hunting is a daily practice of the aboriginal traditional culture. And in the case of Talum, the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law announced by the Presidential Office in 2005 is actually superseded by the laws of Republic of China; this is an exploitation of aboriginal cultures and even a colonial judiciary tyranny to annihilate the aboriginal cultures, said BPGAO.

The ruthless and unscrupulous sentence of Talum's case by the judges are also severely criticized by BPGAO, as their ignorance toward aboriginal cultures is glaringly distressing. For the aboriginal hunting is an ever-lasting spiritual asset, and shotgun is especially an inseparable part of it, all the indigenous peoples and their friends are therefore urged to guard against the rights of the aboriginal by asking Taiwan government to comply with ICCPR, ICESCR and UN Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, remarked BPGAO.

Rev. Omi Wilang, Secretary of PCT Mission Foundation, invited the attention and prayer of PCT presbyteries, especially all aboriginal presbyteries and district assemblies, to concern about this verdict. Once the verdict is finalized, it will become a precedent case with an immeasurable damage to the aboriginal traditions and cultures.

Ciwang Teyray, an youth of Taroko Presbytery reminded that, it is clearly specified in the article 19 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law that the aboriginal have rights to hunt, though, the aboriginal culture of traditional hunting was always intentionally neglected or ignorantly misinterpreted by judiciary system as a special exception only allowed in harvest festival or tribunal rituals in Talum's verdict. In fact the hunting practice, expressed in their sincere prayer or communication to the ancestral spirits before the hunting, is a solemn tribunal ritual proceeded in the daily lives, said Ciwang Teyray.

Translated by Peter Wolfe