Vowing to protect their land, dozens of residents from New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮) yesterday protested a government land seizure plan to make room for a development project in the coastal area.
“We, the people of Gongliao, have lived there for hundreds, or even thousands of years as the indigenous Ketagalan tribe — we are not giving up the land that’s been passed down from our ancestors,” Lin Sheng-yi (林勝義), a native of Gongliao, told a news conference at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
“The Construction and Planning Agency [CPA] is collaborating with big corporations to take over our land — they have no right to seize our land by force,” he said.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Lin, who is a descendent of the Ketagalan Aboriginal people that inhabited Gongliao and most of the Greater Taipei area before Han immigrants from China arrived in Taiwan, said the people of Gongliao had already suffered when plots of their land were taken over by the government decades ago for the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
“We’re not going to allow this to happen again,” Lin said.
According to an official document detailing the project released by the CPA, there are 11 project sites in Gongliao with a total area of 102.56 hectares. The different sites would be turned into commercial, residential and hotel zones.
Chien Fung-jung (簡豐榮), president of Hemei Community Development Association, accused the government of trying to destroy the village by taking over the best farmlands in the community.
“According to the government’s plans, they would take over 40 hectares of the best flat land in the village and turn it into hotels and residential complexes,” Chien said. “After the planned expropriation, only land on the hills that is not arable would be left to us. We cannot grow anything there, the villagers would be forced to leave and the village would be dead.”
The most common agricultural produce in Gongliao includes rice, watermelon and green asparagus — all cultivated on flat land.
Goo Tshun-jiong (吳春蓉), a member of the Taiwan Northeast Coast Concord Alliance, said it did not make sense to build commercial and residential districts in the area, since some of the sites are very close to the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
“The CPA says that it is trying to bring about 9,500 residents into the area, but all the sites [they want] are in the area surrounding the nuclear power plant. Who would want to live next to a nuclear power plant?” Goo asked.
“And isn’t it in the safety handbook that nuclear power plants should be built in low-density areas away from residential neighborhoods?” she added.
Gongliao is a tourist attraction for its landscape, hiking trails in the mountains and beach, Goo said, adding that “urbanization as the CPA plans to do is not suitable for Gongliao, because it would turn it into just another ordinary small city without character.”
“If the government really cares about Gongliao’s development, it should tailor-make a plan for Gongliao, with the participation of all residents,” she said.
“So far, residents have never been consulted in the process of planning such development projects,” she added.
Goo called on the CPA to suspend the development project until it had held negotiations with local residents and farmers.
TECH SECTOR: Nvidia Corp also announced its intent to build an overseas headquarters in Taiwan, with Taipei and New Taipei City each attempting to woo the US chipmaker The US-based Super Micro Computer Inc and Taiwan’s Guo Rui on Wednesday announced a joint venture to build a computation center powered only by renewable energy. After meeting with Supermicro founder Charles Liang (梁見後) and Guo Rui chairman Lin Po-wen (林博文), Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) instructed a cross-ministry panel to be established to help promote the government’s green energy policies and facilitate efforts to obtain land for the generation of green power, Executive Yuan spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said. Cho thanked Liang for his company’s support of the government’s 2019 Action Plan for Welcoming Overseas Taiwanese Businesses to Return to Invest in
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
The lowest temperature in a low-lying area recorded early yesterday morning was in Miaoli County’s Gongguan Township (公館), at 6.8°C, due to a strong cold air mass and the effect of radiative cooling, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. In other areas, Chiayi’s East District (東區) recorded a low of 8.2°C and Yunlin County’s Huwei Township (虎尾) recorded 8.5°C, CWA data showed. The cold air mass was at its strongest from Saturday night to the early hours of yesterday. It brought temperatures down to 9°C to 11°C in areas across the nation and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties,
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
RSS