Farming activists and environmentalists celebrated after the Taipei High Administrative Court yesterday ordered the Central Taiwan Science Park to halt all expansion activities pending a ruling on two ongoing lawsuits.
The science park’s two latest expansion projects — one in Taichung County’s Houli Township (后里) and the other in Changhua County’s Erlin Township (二林) — have sparked controversy in recent years as farmers oppose government expropriation of their farmlands to make way for the science park.
To stop the seizure of their farmlands in Siangsihliao (相思寮), Erlin, activists, environmentalists and local farmers filed three lawsuits with the administrative court — to void the science park’s construction permit for the Erlin project, to nullify the results of an environmental impact assessment, and to order the science park to stop all activities related to the expansion project until rulings on the two prior issues are handed down.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
The court yesterday ruled in favor of the activists and suspended all expansion activities.
“The court ruling stressed a very important point,” Taiwan Rural Front spokeswoman Tsai Pei-hui (蔡培慧) told a news conference at the legislature. “It said ‘economic development and environmental protection are equally important.’”
“This is a very crucial ruling, and we’re now at a very crucial moment: From now on, economic development should no longer take precedence over the environment, as people used to think decades ago,” she said.
The court ruled that since the destruction of farmlands could cause irreversible damage, it was ordering a halt to construction.
Upon hearing the news, several Siangsihliao farmers rushed to Taipei to attend the press conference.
“We may be just illiterate farmers who are not very smart, but we’ve faithfully followed the whole legal process, and we hope the government will also abide by the court ruling,” farmer Chen Huang Yuan (陳黃媛) said.
Another Siangsihliao resident, Yang Yu-chou (楊玉洲), also urged the government to comply with the ruling and avoid wasting more taxpayers’ money on the controversial development project.
Although happy with the ruling, Thomas Chan (詹順貴), a member of the Taiwan Rural Front and a lawyer, voiced his worries that the government may try to twist it when interpreting the ruling.
“Of course the ruling is legally binding, and the project should be suspended right away even if the [science park] administration would like to appeal it,” Chan said. “But I’m still not very confident because of what happened to [the Houli project].”
Last year, the administrative court revoked the environmental impact assessment on the science park’s Houli expansion project. However, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) insisted that construction should continue, saying that since construction started based on a previously completed and valid environmental impact assessment result, it was not in violation of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法), which mandates that such development projects can only begin after completing an environmental impact assessment.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but this is still something to celebrate,” Chan said.
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
RSS