Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Germany has good relations with Taiwan and intends to expand them on various issues, a German Federal Foreign Office official said on Monday, calling for the cross-strait “status quo” to be preserved.

Petra Sigmund, director-general for East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific at the Federal Foreign Office, made the remarks in a keynote speech at the Second Berlin Taiwan Conference.

The conference, held on Monday and yesterday at the German capital, was organized by Reinhard Butikofer, a German member of the European Parliament and chairman of the parliament’s Delegation for Relations with the People’s Republic of China.

Recently, four tribal warrior skulls of the indigenous Paiwan people were finally returned, having been in exile thousands of miles away for 150 years. This is yet another case of repatriation: the return of cultural property or indigenous remains to their original country that had been looted or obtained in wars through illicit means.

The return of the Paiwan warrior skulls from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland is an important page in the history of the indigenous people of Taiwan.

In May, before the coronation of King Charles III, indigenous leaders representing 12 Commonwealth nations demanded that the new king should apologize for the violence and brutality perpetrated by the British crown. They also called for the return of stolen cultural property and ancestral bones.