Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) yesterday said the ministry would seek to implement stricter regulations on government land seizures and push for revisions to the Land Expropriation Act (土地徵收條例).
“If what happened in Dapu (大埔) was just an isolated case, then we probably wouldn’t have had to to worry about it anymore once the issue was settled, but it’s not,” Jiang told Shih Hsin University students in a keynote speech. “If we do not change the [expropriation] system, there will be a second Dapu, a third Dapu and so on.”
He was referring to the dispute between the Miaoli County Government and farmers in Jhunan Township’s (竹南) Dapu Borough, which erupted in June when the county tried to seize about 38 hectares of farmland for a science park expansion.
The farmers refused to give up their land and their battle gained national attention when they posted a video clip on the Internet showing excavators digging up their land.
The video and the farmers’ appeal led to several demonstrations in Taipei and in Miaoli to back demands the government stop the park expansion project.
After Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) intervened, a deal was reached to reserve a zone for agricultural use in the park.
Science and industrial parks have usually been created from farmland because it is less complicated to take over such land, “but from now on, we will do it differently,” Jiang said.
“In the past, there would be schools, hospitals and residential areas within a planned science park. This is the first time that we put an agricultural zone in the plan. However, if a development project is to be located on farmland, we will draw an agricultural zone in it to better protect farmers’ rights,” he said.
The Land Expropriation Act allows the government to seize land by force — as the last resort — when the land is to be used for “public interest,” he said.
The legal definition of “public interest” is too vague, since a firm could claim that it was in the public interest to build a new factory because it would create jobs, he said.
“From now on, we will ask applicants for land expropriation to explain in detail the ‘public interest’ part before our Regional Planning Committee meetings,” he said. “We will seek to review the Land Expropriation Act too, since amendments are the foundation for a more just system.”
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