Despite a promise by the Presidential Office last week to help farmers in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, who oppose a plan by the county government to take over their land to make room for a science park expansion project, the county government moved in excavators to dig up farmland in the area yesterday morning without notifying residents.
Several residents of Dapu Borough (大埔) in Jhunan, a farming village, have been campaigning against the Miaoli County Government's plan, introduced in 2008, to take over their farmland to make way for the expansion of the Jhunan Science Park.
Dapu residents and their supporters held demonstrations in front of the Presidential Office and the Control Yuan on Wednesday asking for help, after excavators sent by the county government partially flattened the rice paddies of farmers who refused to give their land to the county government earlier this month.
At the time, the Presidential Office said it would look into the matter and reply to the residents within a week.
“Look at what the county government is doing now, even before a week has passed,” Dapu Self-Help Association spokeswoman Yeh Hsiu-tao (葉秀桃) told the Taipei Times by telephone.
At about 9am, close to 100 police officers were dispatched to block off roads to Dapu. Soon afterward, excavators moved into rice paddies that had been partially destroyed earlier this month.
“This time, they flattened everything, trucked away mud and rice plants, and turned the farms into a big construction site,” said Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), a National Tsing Hua University student who witnessed the scene.
A video clip shot and uploaded by a self-help association member showed police officers trying to prevent the farmers from getting to their land and taking away those who insisted on doing so.
“One woman was taken in a police car and released somewhere on the coast kilometers away from the village,” Chen said.
Huang Chih-chun (黃智群), deputy director of the county government's Economic Development Department, said the government's action were “completely legal.”
“We completed the process of transferring land ownership in February, so now the land is under the name of the county government,” Huang said. “They shouldn't have planted rice on county government land in the first place.”
Although many landowners have yet to turn in land ownership certificates to the county government, the county government said it had completed the legal process for taking over the land, and that compensation had already been transferred to an account from which the Dapu farmers could withdraw whenever they wanted.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS