More than 3,500 aborigines demonstrated outside Taiwan's Presidential Office yesterday, demanding that Vice-President Annette Lu Hsiu-lien step down for making allegedly racist remarks.
Armed with wooden daggers rather than the shotguns they had threatened to carry, the aborigines from 12 tribes in eight counties staged a sit-in in front of cordons of police and barbed-wire barricades.
'Annette Lu, step down, Annette Lu, resign,' they shouted as they waved the daggers.
Aborigines were outraged when Ms Lu suggested during a recent inspection of flooded areas that the victims, mostly aborigines, should emigrate to Central and South America to make new homes.
The protest started at 2pm and was due to continue late into the night. Police broke up a similar protest last Sunday.
The aborigines had planned to bring their shotguns and sabres to perform a tribal ritual yesterday. But police warned they would be arrested if they brought weapons.
'Let's mourn for the death of human rights in Taiwan,' one organiser said. 'Let's lie down on the ground, on our land to show our grief.'