Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: MosheA/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
A PROPOSED BILL about sites of historical injustice stalled in the legislature last month because of disputes between legislators about its scope.
Specifically, the bill would designate “sites of injustice”, referring to places in Taiwan where acts of historical injustice were carried out. As defined by the National Human Rights Museum, such sites of injustice would primarily apply to places where imprisonment, torture, or executions were carried out by the KMT during Taiwan’s authoritarian period, the period usually referred to as the White Terror.
Part of the dispute is whether these places should be referred to as “sites of injustice” or as “human rights historical sites.” Nevertheless, pan-Blue legislators have called for expanding the scope of the legislation to also cover the Japanese colonial era and the Qing dynasty.
In particular, this move has been fronted by pan-Blue legislators who are Indigenous, such as Sra Kacaw of the KMT or May Chin, who is an independent that caucuses with the KMT. The move has been criticized as an attempt to distract from the crimes of the KMT authoritarian government against individuals in past decades by shifting blame to structural crimes committed by colonial regimes.
One notes that the KMT has increasingly sought to use the claim that it is standing for the interests of Indigenous to justify its actions. For example, contention last year in which the KMT sought to block the Executive Yuan’s budget was justified on the basis that the budget did not include compensation for logging on Indigenous land. While the KMT justified the move as defending Indigenous rights, in reality, the KMT-controlled legislature was seeking to seize power to draw up the national budget from the Executive Yuan, which is Taiwan’s executive branch of government.
The set of office buildings housing the Council of Indigenous Peoples. Photo credit: Solomon203/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
Indeed, the KMT’s actions belie its lack of true regard for Indigenous representation. In a similar timeframe, as pushed for by Indigenous KMT legislators, the KMT has moved to defund Indigenous government institutions such as the Council of Indigenous Peoples, changing current provisions so that serving on the Council of Indigenous Peoples is an unpaid position. The move has been criticized as weakening Indigenous representation within government institutions and disrupting the previous system in which each Indigenous group in Taiwan had one allocated representative.
Furthermore, with moves by the KMT in the legislature to allocate funding away from the central government toward local governments that it controls and drastically cut the budget, the KMT claims that this is aimed at strengthening local government institutions. Critics have instead argued that the move is aimed at hollowing out programs that the central government is responsible for, including Taiwan’s defense budget. But the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Resource Center recently announced its closure, as a result of the lack of funding to the Council of Indigenous Peoples, showing how cultural resources for preserving Indigenous history are the first on the cutting block as a result of continued colonial dynamics.
Indeed, the KMT would probably see greater commemoration of crimes of the Japanese during Japanese colonialism, as a means to distract from its actions. But the KMT would find it inconvenient to truly frame the Qing as also being colonial forces that displaced Indigenous, seeing as it justifies the claim that Taiwan is part of China based on the territory held by the Qing, and emphasizes the cultural and historical links between Taiwan and China based on QIng and Ming history.
And, in the meantime, colonialism continues in contemporary times, as evidenced in how Indigenous continue to be forced off of traditional territories in the name of development. A recent case in point is the development of the “Wizard of Oz” resort in Taitung, in spite of the fact that this occurs on the land of the Pinaski community.
Specifically, in spite of pushback from local Indigenous groups, a preliminary environmental impact assessment for the resort was passed earlier this month by a task force from the Ministry of the Environment. The land that the resort is to be built near is a traditional resting place for ancestors and is used for religious commemorations, and the development of the resort will impact this, in spite of that there is already an oversupply of tourist facilities in Taitung. Still, it is unlikely that KMT local governments will have an interest in addressing the issue–even in KMT-controlled constituencies–if it affects the vested local interests that the KMT depends on for its local patronage networks in rural areas of Taiwan.