Farmers’ rights activists expressed disappointment after a meeting with Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday afternoon, during which the two sides failed to reach a consensus on a dispute over the expropriation of farmland.
“If you cannot solve the problem, there’s no need to try to appease angry farmers,” Taiwan Rural Front spokeswoman Tsai Pei-hui (蔡培慧) told reporters after walking out of the Executive Yuan. “The current Land Expropriation Act (土地徵收條例) has become a tool for land developers and speculators.”
In November last year, both the premier and Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) promised farmers and farmers’ rights advocates that the process to revise the act would at the very least begin during the legislative session which ended last month, she said.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
That promise has not been fulfilled, Tsai said.
“Thousands of farmers and their supporters will take their anger to the streets on Saturday and Wu so urgently wanted to meet us today [yesterday]. I really doubt his motives,” she said.
“What we’re hoping to change is the land expropriation system, which is unjust, while the premier only cares about isolated cases,” said Liao Pen-chuan (廖本全), an associate professor at National Taipei University’s Department of Real Estate and Built Environment.
Although every individual is important, “if the law is not amended, the same problem will happen over and over again,” Liao said.
Liu Ching-chang (劉慶昌), a senior farmer from the Erchongpu (二重埔) community in Jhudong Township (竹東), Hsinchu County, said he was “very disappointed with Wu.”
“Wu was very insincere; the meeting was just a show,” Liu said.
Although activists and farmers were not satisfied with the outcome, Wu saw things differently.
Liao said Wu told them he would give himself a grade of 95 percent for his handling of the land expropriation issue and asked the activists not to pay so much attention to the five points he did not get.
Wu also said he was “extremely unhappy” with what activists had told the media, Liao said, adding that Wu cursed five times during their meeting.
Despite yesterday’s meeting, the overnight rally on Taipei’s Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office on Saturday will proceed as planned, Tsai said, adding that more than 2,500 farmers from 12 communities facing land issues were expected to take part.
Passengers aboard Korean Airlines Flight KE189 arrived in Taichung safely yesterday after a scare the previous day encountering uncontrolled decompression, which injured 13 passengers. Flight KE189 departed from Incheon at 4:45pm on Saturday bound for Taichung with 125 passengers on board. The flight was above Jeju Island when a fault in the pressurization system occurred 50 minutes after takeoff. Online flight tracker Flightradar24’s data show that the plane dropped more than 8,000 meters within 15 minutes, before it returned and landed back at Incheon Airport at 19:38pm. Thirteen passengers on board had a headache or earache due to the incident and were hospitalized. A different
China might seek to isolate Taiwan and weaken its economy through a “quarantine,” which would make it difficult for the US to respond and force Taipei to negotiate on unification, CNN reported on Saturday. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “increasingly bellicose actions” toward Taiwan have heightened concerns that Beijing would use its military against Taiwan, it said, citing a report by think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). However, China might choose to initiate a quarantine, rather than a military invasion of Taiwan, to avoid US involvement, it said. “A quarantine [is] a law enforcement-led operation to control
A new message broadcast on the Taipei MRT’s Wenhu (Brown) Line urging passengers to yield their seats to those in need, not necessarily elderly people, would be extended to other MRT lines and public transportation in the capital, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday. Chiang was responding to reporters’ questions on the sidelines of a news conference at Taipei City Hall promoting healthy walking. Several disputes over priority seats on public transportation have recently been reported, sparking debate about who qualifies to sit in them, as most of the cases involved elderly people asking young people to give up their
President William Lai (賴清德) should backpedal from his new “two-state theory” and return to the “one China” principle in line with the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution, to foster and rebuild mutual trust across the Taiwan Strait, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday. Hsiao made the remark after the Chinese government on Friday revealed guidelines saying that its courts, prosecutors, and public and state security bodies should “severely punish Taiwanese independence diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession crimes by the law, and resolutely defend national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.” The Democratic Progressive Party’s “kneejerk” reaction every