Despite a promise by the Presidential Office last week to help farmers in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, who oppose a plan by the county government to take over their land to make room for a science park expansion project, the county government moved in excavators to dig up farmland in the area yesterday morning without notifying residents.
Several residents of Dapu Borough (大埔) in Jhunan, a farming village, have been campaigning against the Miaoli County Government's plan, introduced in 2008, to take over their farmland to make way for the expansion of the Jhunan Science Park.
Dapu residents and their supporters held demonstrations in front of the Presidential Office and the Control Yuan on Wednesday asking for help, after excavators sent by the county government partially flattened the rice paddies of farmers who refused to give their land to the county government earlier this month.
At the time, the Presidential Office said it would look into the matter and reply to the residents within a week.
“Look at what the county government is doing now, even before a week has passed,” Dapu Self-Help Association spokeswoman Yeh Hsiu-tao (葉秀桃) told the Taipei Times by telephone.
At about 9am, close to 100 police officers were dispatched to block off roads to Dapu. Soon afterward, excavators moved into rice paddies that had been partially destroyed earlier this month.
“This time, they flattened everything, trucked away mud and rice plants, and turned the farms into a big construction site,” said Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), a National Tsing Hua University student who witnessed the scene.
A video clip shot and uploaded by a self-help association member showed police officers trying to prevent the farmers from getting to their land and taking away those who insisted on doing so.
“One woman was taken in a police car and released somewhere on the coast kilometers away from the village,” Chen said.
Huang Chih-chun (黃智群), deputy director of the county government's Economic Development Department, said the government's action were “completely legal.”
“We completed the process of transferring land ownership in February, so now the land is under the name of the county government,” Huang said. “They shouldn't have planted rice on county government land in the first place.”
Although many landowners have yet to turn in land ownership certificates to the county government, the county government said it had completed the legal process for taking over the land, and that compensation had already been transferred to an account from which the Dapu farmers could withdraw whenever they wanted.
Taiwan is to commence mass production of the Tien Kung (天弓, “Sky Bow”) III, IV and V missiles by the second quarter of this year if the legislature approves the government’s NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.78 billion) special defense budget, an official said yesterday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said that the advanced systems are expected to provide crucial capabilities against ballistic and cruise missiles for the proposed “T-Dome,” an advanced, multi-layered air defense network. The Tien Kung III is an air defense missile with a maximum interception altitude of 35km. The Tien Kung IV and V
The disruption of 941 flights in and out of Taiwan due to China’s large-scale military exercises was no accident, but rather the result of a “quasi-blockade” used to simulate creating the air and sea routes needed for an amphibious landing, a military expert said. The disruptions occurred on Tuesday and lasted about 10 hours as China conducted live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait. The Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) said the exercises affected 857 international flights and 84 domestic flights, affecting more than 100,000 travelers. Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the government-sponsored Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said the air
Taiwan lacks effective and cost-efficient armaments to intercept rockets, making the planned “T-Dome” interception system necessary, two experts said on Tuesday. The concerns were raised after China’s military fired two waves of rockets during live-fire drills around Taiwan on Tuesday, part of two-day exercises code-named “Justice Mission 2025.” The first wave involved 17 rockets launched at 9am from Pingtan in China’s Fujian Province, according to Lieutenant General Hsieh Jih-sheng (謝日升) of the Office of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Intelligence at the Ministry of National Defense. Those rockets landed 70 nautical miles (129.6km) northeast of Keelung without flying over Taiwan,
A strong continental cold air mass is to bring pollutants to Taiwan from tomorrow, the Ministry of Environment said today, as it issued an “orange” air quality alert for most of the country. All of Taiwan except for Hualien and Taitung counties is to be under an “orange” air quality alert tomorrow, indicating air quality that is unhealthy for sensitive groups. In China, areas from Shandong to Shanghai have been enveloped in haze since Saturday, the ministry said in a news release. Yesterday, hourly concentrations of PM2.5 in these areas ranged from 65 to 160 micrograms per cubic meter (mg/m³), and pollutants were
RSS