Farming rights advocacy groups yesterday came out in support of the nation’s farmers as they face increasing land expropriation, with two groups also announcing plans for an overnight protest next week.
“The past decade has seen tens of thousands of good farms taken over [for development projects], and farmlands continue to disappear,” alliance president Liu Ching-chang (劉慶昌) told a news conference in Taipei. “I wonder if our children and grandchildren would simply stop eating rice.”
Liu is a farmer from Erchongpu (二重埔) in Jhudong Township (竹東), Hsinchu County, whose farmland is also facing expropriation as the government moves to expand Hsinchu Science Park.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Liu said that government officials — including President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) —had promised farmers last year to revise the Land Expropriation Act (土地徵收條例), but “expropriation has continued everywhere.”
“If the government is sincere about its promise, it should halt all ongoing expropriations until the law is amended,” Liu said.
Liu and other farmers’ rights advocates are not alone in their plea for a halt to forcible land takeover, as individuals and organizations from various countries voiced their support either by showing up in person at the news conference or by signing a petition.
Alex Kawakami, a spokesman for Brazil’s Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra (Landless Farmers’ Movement, MST) who was present at the press conference, said that a global drive to develop biofuel has led to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest’s ecological diversity and regular farming activity as large tracts of land were cleared for corn, soybean or sugarcane plantation.
“As a result, farmers are making less making less money, the unemployment rate has gone up, and [farmers’] lives have been greatly affected,” Kawakami said.
Aside from the MST, several other organizations or individuals, including Vandana Shiva from India’s Navdanya Foundation, Focus on Global South and the Grain, had signed a petition to show their support for farmers in Taiwan.
The Farming Villages Defense Alliance and the Taiwan Rural Front also announced that more than 1,000 farmers from 12 farming communities facing forced land expropriation would stage an overnight rally to voice their discontent on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei starting on the evening of July 16.
In related news, controversy over the government’s public grain procurement policy came under spotlight this week when an elderly farmer in Chiayi County allegedly committed suicide because of anxiety about lower prices and the blight that struck his paddy field this year.
Visiting the farmer’s family on Tuesday, Chiayi County Commissioner Chang Hwa-kuan (張花冠) criticized the government’s food policy, saying that the timing was bad, that it lacked supporting measures and that it had failed to benefit farmers.
Since the government raised grain procurement prices by NT$3 per kilogram in April — when farmers had already run out of stock — grain merchants, rather than farmers, have been the beneficiaries of the policy, Chang said.
An abundant harvest during the year’s first harvest season prompted some grain merchants to lower procurement prices, forcing farmers to sell their produce cheaply, she said.
Chen Jun-yan (陳俊言), section director of the southern region branch of the Agriculture and Food Agency, has said that the lower-than-expected procurement price was a result of the increased harvest, which rose by 10 to 20 percent this year.
This year’s first harvest was also completed in a very short time, which has not happened in 20 years, Chen added.
The Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is to tighten rules for candidates running for public office, requiring them to declare that they do not hold a Chinese household registration or passport, and that they possess no other foreign citizenship. The requirement was set out in a draft amendment to the Enforcement Rules of the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法 ) released by the ministry on Thursday. Under the proposal, candidates would need to make the declaration when submitting their registration forms, which would be published in the official election bulletin. The move follows the removal of several elected officials who were
The Republic of China (ROC) is celebrating its 114th Double Ten National Day today, featuring military parades and a variety of performances and speeches in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei. The Taiwan Taiko Association opened the celebrations with a 100-drummer performance, including young percussionists. As per tradition, an air force Mirage 2000 fighter jet flew over the Presidential Office as a part of the performance. The Honor Guards of the ROC and its marching band also heralded in a military parade. Students from Taichung's Shin Min High School then followed with a colorful performance using floral imagery to represent Taiwan's alternate name
COVETED PRIZE: The US president would be a peace prize laureate should he persuade Xi Jinping to abandon military aggression against Taiwan, William Lai said US President Donald Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize should he be able to convince Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to abandon the use of force against Taiwan, President William Lai (賴清德) told a conservative US radio show and podcast in an interview. The US is Taiwan’s most important international backer, despite the absence of formal ties, but since Trump took office earlier this year he has not announced any new arms sales to the nation. Trump could meet Xi at the APEC summit in South Korea on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1. Lai, speaking on The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton
A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would severely threaten the national security of the US, Japan, the Philippines and other nations, while global economic losses could reach US$10 trillion, National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) wrote in an article published yesterday in Foreign Affairs. “The future of Taiwan is not merely a regional concern; it is a test of whether the international order can withstand the pressure of authoritarian expansionism,” Lin wrote in the article titled “Taiwan’s Plan for Peace Through Strength — How Investments in Resilience Can Deter Beijing.” Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) intent to take Taiwan by force
RSS