Environmentalists delivered the “Black Planet Award” to Formosa Plastics Group (FPG) yesterday.
The German-based Foundation Ethics and Economics Conference (Ethcon) gave the conglomerate the award for its “continuing sequence of social and ecological foul play throughout the world.”
The environmentalists also accused Taipei bus operators of tampering with their advertisements about the award.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
However, no one from the Formosa Group showed up at the ceremony — which featured a skit portraying President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as a toady of big corporations — to claim the award.
Calling the award “the shame of Taiwan,” Chien Hsi-chieh (簡錫土皆) of the Alliance for Fair Tax Reform, said Formosa had only been able to grow so big so fast because of tax benefits from the government.
“The interest rate for corporate loans used to be about 10 percent,” Chien said. “Formosa was able to secure a loan of NT$140 billion [US$4.4 billion] and it only paid 3 percent in interest. The other 7 percent of interest rate was paid by taxpayers.”
The six-year-old Ethocon annually presents a “Blue Planet Award” to those who try to protect the Earth, and “Black Planet Award” to those who have demonstrated they represent a clear danger to the Earth.
Janis Wang (王佳貞), a representative of the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, said the group bought ad space on 23 buses operating along 10 different routes in Taipei that would take them past FPG’s buildings, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and other sites.
When the association’s representatives went to check the ads on Tuesday, they found the character “shame” (恥) on the poster had been removed, she said. The bus operators then told them they had to submit ads for review and approval first.
“We didn’t know we had to submit the advertisement for review,” Wang said. “When we found the mistake we called [the operators] and asked what we should do. They told us that we could fix the problem by providing requested documents.”
On Tuesday night, however, Wang said that they were told that the ads had to go.
Wang said that the association has collected NT$150,000 in donations to finance the ad campaign.
Green Party Taiwan Secretary- General Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲) said the ad addresses an issue that was open for discussion. He said FPG does not have to pressure bus operators to take out a word in such a secretive manner.
“It restricts people’s speech and shows that the law of the Wangs [FPG’s owners] is more powerful than the Constitution,” Pan said.
Some environmentalists will attend FPG’s shareholders’ meeting next month, Pan said.
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying
RSS