The Taiwan Original Land Devel-opment Rights Alliance (台灣原開墾農權聯盟) and Democratic Progres-sive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) yesterday refuted independent legislator May Chin's (高金素梅) accusation that alliance members had paid the DPP legislators large sums of money to lobby the Executive Yuan to legalize the members' illegal usurpation of mountainous areas.
Chin declared two days ago that Han farmers had paid Tsai and Nantou County Commissioner Lin Tsung-nan (
She said the Executive Yuan's allowing these farmers to develop the areas without restriction and the resulting over-development was the main reason for the serious damage caused by Tropical Storm Mindulle.
But the alliance's chief, Wu Lien-hsing (
"We and our ancestors have been working on the same farms for 100 or 200 years now. We simply missed the chance to claim the land as our own when the government allowed us to in the past. We are now asking the government to review our cases and see whether it is feasible to release the land to the farmers who are actually working on it," Wu said.
"May Chin is slinging mud at the hardworking farmers for her own political gain," Wu said.
The alliance gathered to protest outside Chin's office, but Chin refused to receive them.
Tsai was also quite angry at Chin yesterday, and he pointed out that in contrast to what Chin declared two days ago, not only DPP legislators but all caucus whips were sympathetic with the alliance when the alliance came to visit the legislature in February to petition for improvement of the farmers' conditions.
"Chin was singling out the DPP, but her caucus whip also signed the resolution to support the alliance. She is contradicting herself," Tsai said.
He showed the signed resolution, which showed that all caucus whips agreed to help the alliance petition the Executive Yuan about the farmers' conditions. Tsai also threatened to sue Chin, but Chin refused to apologize.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is urging Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift