With some laughter, but mostly anger and other emotions, thousands of farmers from across the country, as well as academics and farmers’ rights activists, rallied yesterday evening on Taipei’s Ketagalan Boulevard in pouring rain, to call for an immediate revision to the Land Expropriation Act (土地徵收條例).
“We the farmers have to stand united to fight against forced land takeovers — I am in my 80s and I would be willing to defend my land with my life,” Hsieh Chien-hsiang (謝見祥), a farmer from Jhubei City (竹北), Hsinchu County, said to the demonstrating crowd last night, which responded with cheers and applause. “The government is lawless, as the Constitution protects our right to survival, to property and to work, yet the government is taking all these rights away from us and we have no other choice but to stay in solidarity!”
He added that while all humans would eventually die, the land would always be there, “therefore we have to fight to keep the land that has been passed down by our ancestors.”
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Participants in the rally last night included the farming community of Donghai (東海) in Jhubei, which is one of 12 farming communities either facing forced land expropriation for various development projects or unequal distribution of water resources.
Other affected communities include: Dapu Borough (大埔) in Miaoli County’s Jhunan Township (竹南); Siangsihliao (相思寮) in Erlin Township (二林) and Sijhou Township (溪洲), Changhua County; Tianliaoyang (田寮洋) in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City; Wurih District (烏日) in Greater Taichung; and Meinong District (美濃) in Greater Kaohsiung.
Liu Ching-chang (劉慶昌), a farmer from the Erchongpu (二重埔) farming community in Jhudong Township (竹東), Hsinchu County, said farmers staged a second overnight rally in front of the Presidential Office because the government had failed to respond positively to the first one last year despite promises by 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).
“They promised that proposals to revise the Land Expropriation Act would be sent to the Legislative Yuan by May, but it didn’t happen,” Liu said. “Not only that, the government never stopped or slowed down existing expropriation projects.”
“My friends, it’s raining heavily now, but we will not be discouraged; rather, we will be even more brave in the pouring rain and if the government does not amend the law, we will continue with our fight,” he said.
Several academics supporting land expropriation victims spoke at the rally, while several bands performed in support of the campaign.
Demonstrators stayed overnight and will end the rally with a news conference at 8am today.
At a separate setting yesterday, the premier, in response to the demonstration, said the government understood the demands of the protesters, promising to protect the rights of farmers when implementing government policies.
“We will follow the principles we used to handle the Dapu farmland controversy last year to preserve houses that are legally built and to centralize dispersed farmland,” he said.
Wu said that the measures employed to handle the Dapu farmland controversy met the expectations of all concerned and added the government would follow the same approach when dealing with issues related to land seizures in the future.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
US-CHINA SUMMIT: MOFA welcomed US reassurance of no change in its Taiwan policy; Trump said he did not comment when Xi talked of opposing independence US President Donald Trump yesterday said he has not made a decision on whether to move forward with a major arms package for Taiwan after hearing concerns about it from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Trump’s comments on Taiwan came as he flew back to Washington after wrapping up critical talks in which both leaders said important progress was made in stabilizing US-China relations even as deep differences persist between the world’s two biggest powers on Iran and Taiwan. “I will make a determination,” Trump said, adding: “I’ll be making decisions. But, you know, I think the last thing we need right
RSS