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As the nation’s economy developed, the old-fashioned labor-intensive kilns that once dotted the area became outdated.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 Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,