Farming activists and environmentalists celebrated after the Taipei High Administrative Court yesterday ordered the Central Taiwan Science Park to halt all expansion activities pending a ruling on two ongoing lawsuits.
The science park’s two latest expansion projects — one in Taichung County’s Houli Township (后里) and the other in Changhua County’s Erlin Township (二林) — have sparked controversy in recent years as farmers oppose government expropriation of their farmlands to make way for the science park.
To stop the seizure of their farmlands in Siangsihliao (相思寮), Erlin, activists, environmentalists and local farmers filed three lawsuits with the administrative court — to void the science park’s construction permit for the Erlin project, to nullify the results of an environmental impact assessment, and to order the science park to stop all activities related to the expansion project until rulings on the two prior issues are handed down.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
The court yesterday ruled in favor of the activists and suspended all expansion activities.
“The court ruling stressed a very important point,” Taiwan Rural Front spokeswoman Tsai Pei-hui (蔡培慧) told a news conference at the legislature. “It said ‘economic development and environmental protection are equally important.’”
“This is a very crucial ruling, and we’re now at a very crucial moment: From now on, economic development should no longer take precedence over the environment, as people used to think decades ago,” she said.
The court ruled that since the destruction of farmlands could cause irreversible damage, it was ordering a halt to construction.
Upon hearing the news, several Siangsihliao farmers rushed to Taipei to attend the press conference.
“We may be just illiterate farmers who are not very smart, but we’ve faithfully followed the whole legal process, and we hope the government will also abide by the court ruling,” farmer Chen Huang Yuan (陳黃媛) said.
Another Siangsihliao resident, Yang Yu-chou (楊玉洲), also urged the government to comply with the ruling and avoid wasting more taxpayers’ money on the controversial development project.
Although happy with the ruling, Thomas Chan (詹順貴), a member of the Taiwan Rural Front and a lawyer, voiced his worries that the government may try to twist it when interpreting the ruling.
“Of course the ruling is legally binding, and the project should be suspended right away even if the [science park] administration would like to appeal it,” Chan said. “But I’m still not very confident because of what happened to [the Houli project].”
Last year, the administrative court revoked the environmental impact assessment on the science park’s Houli expansion project. However, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) insisted that construction should continue, saying that since construction started based on a previously completed and valid environmental impact assessment result, it was not in violation of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法), which mandates that such development projects can only begin after completing an environmental impact assessment.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but this is still something to celebrate,” Chan said.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS