Hundreds of people — including film director Leon Dai (戴立忍) — have challenged Le Young Construction (樂揚建設) to sue them after the company filed a slander lawsuit against a Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA) student.
The student, Huang Hui-yu (黃慧瑜), posted a comment critical of the firm’s actions surrounding an urban renewal project on her Facebook page.
“To Le Young Construction, the following remark, in quotation marks, is exactly the same as the comment that TNUA student Huang Hui-yu wrote on her Facebook page,” Tai said on his own Facebook page.
Photo: Huang Chi-hao, Taipei Times
“I’ve heard that your respected company has filed a slander lawsuit against Huang for the remark. If this is so, please also file a slander lawsuit against me, thank you,” he wrote.
Huang, a graduate student at the TNUA and a member of the Taiwan Alliance for Victims of Urban Renewal, criticized several construction firms that have initiated urban renewal projects — including Le Young — as “notorious” and hinted they have connections to the mafia.
Le Young Construction, which labels itself as “the No. 1 brand in urban renewal,” is the initiator of the urban renewal project in Taipei City’s Shilin District (士林), which involves demolishing a block of decades-old apartments to make way for a 15-story high-rise luxury housing complex.
Although most of the property owners on the block agreed to the project, a family surnamed Wang (王) that owned two homes there refused to take part and wanted to keep their homes.
However, because the Wangs did not express their objections in writing in the project’s initial phase and because more than 75 percent of the property owners on the block agreed to the project, the Wangs’ homes were forcefully demolished on March 28 by a demolition squad sent by the city government. The demolition squad was escorted by more than 1,000 police officers.
According to the Urban Renewal Act (都市更新條例), the initiator of an urban renewal project may ask the city government to demolish the properties of those who do not wish to take part in the project, as long as three quarters of property owners on the site agree to the project.
On March 28, about 400 people — many of them college students — rallied outside the Wangs’ properties trying to stop the demolition. They were all removed by force and arrested after physical clashes with the police.
Later on, protesters broke down the construction fence and returned to the site where the Wangs’ homes once stood, and continued to protest.
Le Young last week filed lawsuits against Wang Kuang-shu (王廣樹), head of the Wang family, for breaking the fence and against Huang over her criticism of the company.
Immediately after Tai’s Facebook post, supporters of the Wangs launched an activity on Facebook to post the same statement as Huang and Tai, challenging Le Young to sue them as well.
“I can’t do anything with my friends in person to show support for the Wangs since I’m not in Taipei, but it’s a way of expressing my support if I could also be sued,” Benla Kuang (管中祥), an associate professor at National Chungcheng University’s Department of Communications, said on his Facebook page.
Besides posting the statement to invite a lawsuit, Mickey Lin (林彥瑜), a junior student at National Taiwan University’s Department of Politics, said she would like to launch a fundraising drive to hire an attorney for Huang.
“If they [Le Young] crush the students in this battle, there would be less students willing to stand up for injustices in society and more parents would try to stop their children from taking part in public issues,” Lin said on Facebook.
“Students are penniless and powerless, but we have a conscience and passion that could touch many people,” she said.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
RSS