While the Miaoli County Government said it had demolished historic kilns on its territory earlier this month following advice made at a cultural heritage assessment commission meeting, it recently admitted that the meeting never took place.
The three kilns, located in Miaoli’s Houlong Township (後龍), were surrounded by rice fields and farms.
During the Japanese colonial era, the area was home to a flourishing pottery industry.
As the nation’s economy developed, the old-fashioned labor-intensive kilns that once dotted the area became outdated. They were closed down, demolished or turned into factories producing pottery with modern technology and equipment.
In 2003, however, the county government said it would build a station for the nearby high-speed rail and drew up an urban development project to turn the surrounding area into a transportation hub and high-tech industrial zone.
Facing protests from local historians and kiln preservationists after the last three kilns in the area were destroyed earlier this month to make way for the project, the county government said in a press conference on Jan. 9 that it had done so based on the cultural heritage assessment, which allegedly ruled that the kilns bore no historic or cultural value.
Although Miaoli International Culture and Tourism Bureau Director Lin Chen-fong (林振豐) openly said on several occasions that the demolition was done based on the cultural heritage commission’s assessment, he admitted yesterday that such a meeting never happened.
“We called for a cultural heritage assessment commission meeting [on Dec. 16], but the meeting didn’t happen because an insufficient number of members showed up,” Lin told the Taipei Times during a telephone interview yesterday.
He said that according to the law half of the commission members must be present for a cultural heritage assessment to be held.
Activists who for years have fought for the kilns’ preservation were upset and vowed to take legal action against county officials.
“We will file a complaint against the county government with the Control Yuan,” preservationist Tai Wen-hsiang (戴文祥) said. “We will also file lawsuits against Lin and County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung [劉政鴻].”
“Officials should take their legal, political and historical responsibilities seriously,” he said.
Lin said the county government did not do anything wrong.
“According to the Cultural Heritage Protection Act [文化資產保護法], the local government head has the ultimate authority to make decisions about the handling of cultural heritage sites,” Lin said. “So even if the cultural heritage commission were to rule that the kilns should be preserved, the decision would not be legally binding.”
“The meeting did not happen, but those who showed up that day did inspect the site and said that the kilns were not of enough cultural value to warrant preservation,” Lin said. “So we didn’t lie.”
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
RSS