President pardons Bunun hunter
HEALING TENSION:
Tama Talum welcomed the pardon, while the Presidential Office said that it carried special weight amid efforts for transitional justice for Aborigines
By Jake Chung / Staff writer, with CNA
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday pardoned a Bunun hunter charged in 2013 with killing protected animals, on the first anniversary of her second presidential term.
The pardon of Tama Talum, convicted in 2015 for killing a Reeves’ muntjac and a Formosan serow with a modified shotgun, is the first pardon of Tsai’s two terms since 2016 and the seventh since the enactment of the Constitution on Dec. 25, 1947.
Talum was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for possessing an illegal weapon and hunting protected species. He appealed, and in 2017, the Supreme Court suspended the hearing, but asked the Council of Grand Justices to review hunting regulations under the Controlling Guns, Ammunition and Knives Act (槍砲彈藥刀械管制條例) and the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法).