Since Thursday morning, environmentalists and a retired high-school teacher have been taking turns sitting in and hugging trees at New Taipei Municipal Chiang-Tsui Junior High School, protesting against measures to remove 32 trees for a public construction project on the campus.
For the past six years, a proposed swimming pool and underground parking lot in an area with dozens of old trees on the campus in New Taipei City (新北市) has been a controversial issue, as a city councilor and the school’s president support the project, while many nearby residents, teachers and environmentalists are against the destruction of the “sea of trees.”
On Thursday morning, Pan Han-chiang (潘翰疆), head of a tree protection volunteer group, climbed into a banyan tree with Green Party Taiwan member and local resident Wang Chung-ming (王鐘銘).
Photo: Ho Yu-hwa, Taipei Times
They remained there overnight in heavy rain, faced with police who were trying to remove them, but supported by local residents, who brought them food.
At 6am yesterday, a retired teacher from the school, Chen Tsai-luan (鄭彩鑾), climbed up the tree and took a turn “tree sitting” as Wang climbed down.
As of 7pm yesterday, Pan had been sitting in the tree for 37 hours.
The Green Party Taiwan said construction workers began to remove the trees on Tuesday, but were forced to stop by the city’s agriculture department for violating standards. The workers continued sawing down the trees on Wednesday, so the volunteers said they had no other option but to try and protect the 32 trees that are due to be removed.
“The tree removal plan is unprofessional, the survival rate of the trees will become very low once their roots are damaged, but the agricultural department did not do anything to rescue the trees,” Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲) of the Green Party Taiwan said, adding that hurting the trees is a terrible example to set the school’s students.
Members of the tree protection volunteer group said there are already enough parking spaces in the nearby area and that the construction project would destroy the “Small Vienna Forrest” — local residents’ nickname for the area — which is the only piece of green land with trees in the whole neighborhood.
An official from the city’s agriculture department said yesterday that an examination of five trees sawed down on Tuesday showed that inappropriate measures had been used to remove them, with too few branches remaining, adding that the trees would be treated to try and save them.
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was questioned by prosecutors for allegedly orchestrating an attack on a taxi driver after he was allegedly driven on a longer than necessary route in a car he disliked. The questioning at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office was ongoing as of press time last night. Police have recommended charges of attempted murder. The legally embattled actor — known for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代) — is under a separate investigation for allegedly using fake medical documents to evade mandatory military service. According to local media reports, police said Wang earlier last year ordered a
President William Lai (賴清德) should protect Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), and stop supporting domestic strife and discord, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrote on Facebook yesterday. US President Donald Trump and TSMC on Monday jointly announced that the company would invest an additional US$100 billion over the next few years to expand its semiconductor manufacturing operations in the US. The TSMC plans have promoted concern in Taiwan that it would effectively lead to the chipmaking giant becoming Americanized. The Lai administration lacks tangible policies to address concerns that Taiwan might follow in Ukraine’s footsteps, Ma wrote. Instead, it seems to think it could
A man in Tainan has been cleared on charges of public insult after giving the middle finger during a road rage incident, as judges deemed the gesture was made “briefly to express negative feelings.” In last week’s ruling at the High Court’s Tainan branch, judges acquitted a driver, surnamed Cheng (程), for an incident along Tainan’s Nanmen Road in September 2023, when Cheng had spotted a place to park his car in an adjacent lane. Cheng slowed down his vehicle to go into reverse, to back into the parking spot, but the car behind followed too closely, as its driver thought Cheng
DEFENSE: The purpose of the exercises is to identify strategies for the government to control risks during tensions, prevent war and bolster national resilience A tabletop exercise series has begun simulating possible scenarios if the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched a war against Taiwan in the guise of a military exercise. The exercise series is jointly organized by National Chengchi University’s Institute of International Relations, Taiwan Center for Security Studies and Asia-Pacific Policy Research Association. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Yeong-kang (陳永康), former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) director William Stanton and Taiwan Center for Security Studies director Liu Fu-kuo (劉復國) attended the event in Taipei yesterday. Scenarios that would be simulated include changing political circumstances in the US during US President Donald Trump’s tenure
RSS