On June 9, 2010, the Miaoli County Government sent excavators to Jhunan Township’s (竹南) Dapu Village (大埔) and, without notifying the residents, destroyed the rice paddies of farmers who refused to surrender their land to make way for the planned expansion of the Jhunan Science Park.
In a bid to resolve the controversy that ensued after the death of 72-year-old Chu Feng-min (朱馮敏), who allegedly committed suicide to protest the land seizures, then-premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) met with Dapu representatives two months later and pledged to protect the farmers’ properties.
Fast-forward to this month and the plight facing the Dapu farmers remains unchanged, despite current vice president Wu’s promise.
On June 11, Peng Hsiu-chun (彭秀春), Chu Shu (朱樹), Huang Fu-chi (黃福記) and Ko Cheng-fu (柯成福) — whose homes are on land set to be turned into a science park — each received an official notice from the county government asking them to “voluntarily relocate by July 5,” or a demolition squad would flatten their houses.
Is this how Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government officials treat promises, by putting up a display of sincerity while making pledges which they toss away like toilet paper after any resulting controversy appears to have fallen off the public’s radar?
Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and Wu may disagree with such a description, contending that the government has handed out compensation to the Dapu residents and that the remaining four houses do not meet “certain principles” that would exempt them from demolition. However, whether they like it or not, both the premier and the vice president have, through their insensitive and aloof rhetoric and conduct, once again undermined the government’s credibility and repulsed the public with their callousness and lack of empathy.
In times like these, it is ironic to consider President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) favorite expression: “Government officials ought to feel the pain of the people.”
In fact, many also recall that the president often pledges that his government will listen attentively to what the public is saying and reflect on how it might actually change people’s lives for the better.
“My house is only 6 ping [19.8m2] now because about half of it was torn down for a road to be widened and, if the latest demolition happens, we would have only 0.5 ping left... Why is it so hard to keep something that’s ours?” Chang Sen-wen (張森文), a resident of one of the four houses facing demolition, said in tears yesterday.
Jiang’s latest stance appears to favor the Miaoli County Government’s plan to tear down the houses tomorrow, so it would seem that he has not listened to the Dapu farmers’ cries, or worse, cannot empathize with them.
While some may be quick to dismiss the current Dapu controversy as a petty issue involving only a handful of houses, the insensitive way in which the government has approached the matter should not be overlooked. If this is the way officials demonstrate their way of governance, the Dapu case may not be the last in which people’s property is flattened by government excavators overnight.
This begs the question: When will the Ma administration learn to start behaving with a little more empathy and humanity?
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
RSS