TAIPEI, Taiwan —
Taiwan’s Constitutional Court on Friday upheld
several key provisions of two
laws that restrict hunting, in a setback to the
island’s Indigenous rights movement.
اضافة اعلان
Although the court struck down some parts of the laws —
including a rule that would require hunters to apply for permits — it declined
to overhaul the restrictions altogether, stating that Indigenous hunting
culture had to be balanced against the need to protect the environment and
wildlife.
“The constitution recognizes both the protection of Indigenous
peoples’ right to practice their hunting culture and the protection of the
environment and ecology,” chief justice Hsu Tzong-li said Friday. “Both
fundamental values are equally important.”
Conservationists and animal welfare activists welcomed the
decision. In March, 57 groups in Taiwan issued a joint statement, arguing that
protecting hunting culture was not comparable to guaranteeing the right to hunt
freely.
“Non-human animal creatures and people are a community with a
shared future,” several animal groups said in a joint statement Friday.
The court’s decision centered on a 2013 case against a member of
the Bunun, one of 16 officially recognized Indigenous groups in Taiwan, who had
been convicted of using an illegal shotgun to kill protected species.
The 62-year-old man, Talum Suqluman, also known as Tama Talum,
was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. He appealed the decision, arguing that
he had followed tribal customs to hunt animals for his ailing mother, and a
court suspended the sentence in 2017.
But Talum continued to fight the conviction, and the case went
to the Constitutional Court, which reviewed whether the laws unfairly infringed
on the rights of Indigenous people to hunt. Activists have pointed out that the
Indigenous peoples of Taiwan hunted and fished with little interference for
thousands of years until settlers from mainland China and elsewhere began
arriving in the 17th century.
Under the current laws, Indigenous people are allowed to carry
out small hunts, but only using homemade guns and traps, which are sometimes
unsafe. They must obtain prior approval and they are banned from killing
protected species, including leopard cats and Formosan black bears.
Following the announcement, Indigenous rights activists outside
the courthouse voiced their disappointment.
“The hunters are innocent!” they chanted. “Give us back our
freedom to hunt!”
It was not immediately clear if under Friday’s ruling, Talum
would be required to serve out his sentence. But shortly after the
announcement, Talum vowed to continue hunting.
“Hunting is the culture of us Indigenous people,” Talum told
reporters Friday from his home in the eastern city of Taitung. “How could you
wipe out our hunting culture?”
Taiwan has 580,000 Indigenous residents, or about 2 percent of
the population of 23 million, the majority of whom are
ethnic Han people.
The movement to address discrimination and other long-standing
social and economic problems faced by Indigenous peoples in Taiwan emerged in
the 1990s, part of a broader international push for Native rights. Such causes
have since gained ground as the island increasingly seeks to carve out an
identity that’s distinct from mainland China.
In 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan offered a formal
apology to Indigenous peoples for centuries of “pain and mistreatment,” and
said that she would take concrete steps to rectify a history of injustice.
The rights movement has lately centered on Talum’s case, which
many activists see as linked to broader issues of Indigenous land rights and
self-governance. They say that the government’s laws restricting hunting are
unnecessary since Indigenous hunting culture is already circumscribed by a
complex web of taboos and rituals.
“This outcome was a
little unexpected,” Hsieh Meng-yu, Talum’s lawyer, said in an interview after
the court ruling was announced. “We thought the Indigenous rights movement
would keep moving forward — we didn’t think that there would suddenly be this
decline.”
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