The Green Party Taiwan yesterday prevented the Taipei City Government from felling a tree on the site of the former Songshan Tobacco Factory after one of its members climbed the tree.
The Songshan Tobacco Factory was established under Japanese colonial rule in the 1930s. In 2006, the Taipei City Government signed a contract with the Farglory Group to build a 429,000m² dome complex at the site in a build-operate-transfer project with a budget of more than NT$23 billion (US$695.9 million).
The complex, to be completed next year, will include a 40,000-seat indoor multi-function sports stadium, a department store with restaurants and movie theaters, a luxury hotel with a business center and an office building.
Farglory will operate the Taipei Dome Complex for 50 years. After that, ownership and operation of the complex will revert to the city government.
Environmentalists and local residents opposed the project because they were concerned that it would damage the local ecosystem.
After the factory was closed in 1998, thick vegetation has grown at the site and it has become a habitat for many rare species. As the contractor yesterday went to remove the last tree on the construction site, Green Party Taiwan members and local residents rushed in to save it.
Green Party Taiwan secretary-general Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲), party member Robin Winkler (文魯彬) and Parents’ Association chairman Yu Yi (游藝) from Guangfu Elementary School were arrested for trespassing and disturbing the peace.
CANDIDATE
However, Calvin Wen (溫炳原), the Green Party Taiwan candidate for the Da-an District legislative by-election, stopped workers from removing the tree after he climbed the 15m camphor tree.
“I’ll get down as soon my demands are met,” Wen told dozens of police officers, firefighters and construction workers.
“You should wait for the court rulings and the results of the second environmental impact assessment to come out. You should respect the legal process,” Wen said at the site.
Although the construction project has already passed an environmental impact assessment, a second assessment is required, as Farglory made some changes to the project.
The city government has allowed Farglory to continue its work, prompting environmental groups to file a lawsuit against the government.
REFUTED
The court meeting for the case took place yesterday, but officials refuted accusations that the project damaged the environment.
“It’s perfectly legal that we act according to the results of the first assessment before the second [environmental impact] assessment is complete,” said Lee Kan (李侃), executive secretary of the Taipei Cultural and Sports Park — the official name of the future dome complex.
“So far, we haven’t received any court order asking us to stop the construction,” Lee said.
The construction contractor decided to postpone removal of the tree after Wen refused to come down from it.
As of press time, Wen was still in the tree.
He said he would not get down until receiving a positive response from the city government.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS