Puyuma people from Taitung County’s Katatipul Community yesterday traveled to Taipei to protest a solar power installation project planned on their land, demanding that the government terminate the project unless local Aborigines consent.
Dressed in traditional costumes, nearly 20 Puyuma protested in front of the Executive Yuan compound, holding Chinese-language banners that read: “The land is my mother, not your cash dispenser” and “defend sovereignty and revoke the project.”
The county government in January last year announced bidding for the development project, which is to cover 226 hectares and estimated to be worth NT$8 billion (US$259.6 million), said Chen Cheng-tsung (陳政宗), convener of the group.
Puyuma ancestors settled in the area in the 16th century, but they were not involved in the project’s planning process, as required by Article 21 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law (原住民族基本法), Chen said.
The development area is in the community’s domain and partly overlaps the Jhihben Wetlands (知本溼地), community member Lu Hung-wen (呂宏文) said.
The community does not oppose solar power development, but the government should consult local Aborigines’ opinions before opening the area for development, Lu said.
They protested yesterday instead of earlier because it took community members time to understand the project and the law, Lu said.
While the county government had convened meetings to explain the project, they were mostly one-way policy promotion events, Environmental Rights Foundation chief executive Tu Yu-wen (涂又文) said, urging the central government to push local officials to improve communication with Aborigines as required by law.
Also at the protest were nuclear power proponents Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修) and Liao Yen-peng (廖彥朋), who said that the government should not sacrifice Aboriginal rights and wetland ecology to promote its “nuclear-free homeland.”
However, community members rejected their support.
Most community members do not know the advocates of nuclear power and were baffled by their uninvited appearance, Lu said, adding that Huang and Liao should not co-opt the demands of Aborigines.
The protest is not about supporting or opposing green energy development, but about consulting Aborigines’ opinions before exploiting their land, Indigenous Youth Front member Savungaz Valincinan said.
The Executive Yuan received the Puyuma appeal and said it would relay the information to the agency in charge.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,