Residents of Sanying Aboriginal Community (三鶯部落) yesterday remained unconvinced following a visit by Eric Chu (朱立倫), mayor of New Taipei City (新北市, the proposed English name for the upgraded Taipei County), who sat down with members of the community to discuss a number of controversies.
Sanying Community is located on the bank of the Dahan River (大漢橋). It received its name -because of its proximity to Sanying Bridge (三鶯大橋), which connects Sansia (三峽) and Yingge (鶯歌) districts in New Taipei City.
Like most other riverside Aboriginal communities in New Taipei City and Taoyuan County, the majority of residents are of the Amis tribe from Hualien and Taitung counties who migrated to urban areas to gain employment as construction workers, miners or temporary workers because they could not find work in their home counties.
Unable to pay for housing, they built their own houses with whatever materials they could find on unused riverside lands.
Considered illegal constructions, such riverside communities are constantly at risk of being torn down — and many of them have been flattened several times — with the residents rebuilding their villages because they have nowhere else to go.
Chu visited Sanying Aboriginal Community in the morning, something he had promised to do during his electoral campaign.
Although Chu agreed to help each household get water, electricity and official household registration, he did not respond to the question of whether Sanying residents could stay where they are or if the city government would help them find another plot of land to move to.
“I think now is the time for everyone — including the [city’s] Indigenous Peoples Bureau, the community itself and civic groups assisting the community — to peacefully face the issue,” he said.
“The city government, as a team, will face up to the problem and solve it,” Chu said. “I may not solve the issue right away, but I’m grateful for the efforts that former [Taipei County commissioners] Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) and Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) have made. I will continue to work based on what they have already accomplished.”
Some locals were unconvinced by the rhetoric.
“He [Chu] didn’t say anything concrete,” Sanying resident Chang Hsiu-yi (張秀宜) told the Taipei Times after Chu left. “I don’t think his visit will have any significant impact.”
Chang said she was worried about the future of the community because Chu had a record of demolishing riverside Aboriginal communities during his term as Taoyuan County commissioner.
“He talks well, he talks beautifully to the media, but I think it’s all fake,” Chang said.
After Sanying, Chu visited Sijhou Aboriginal Community along the Sindian River (新店溪), which is in Sindian District in a similar situation to Sanying Community, and vowed to uphold Chou’s promise to find another plot of land for the village.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods