Residents from Miaoli County’s Yuanli Township (苑裡), on the 11th day of a hunger strike, rallied yesterday outside the Executive Yuan, protesting against a project to build wind turbines near their homes.
“I want to stress that we are not against green energy solutions. In fact, we fully support them,” said Chen Hui-ming (陳薈茗), a resident whose father coughed up blood 10 days into the hunger strike.
“We are just asking the government and the building contractor to respect us local residents, include us in the negotiations, and keep a safe distance between our homes and the wind turbines,” Chen said.
The Germany-based wind energy firm, InfraVest GmbH, plans to build 12 new wind turbines along the coast of Miaoli County — six in Tongsiao Township (通霄) and the other six in Yuanli.
Worried about potential negative impacts from the turbines and upset that they were not consulted about the project, Yuanli residents have launched a campaign asking InfraVest to revise its plan about half a year ago.
While InfraVest initially suspended construction because of the protests, the project was resumed earlier this month without any agreement having been reached with residents earlier this month, triggering a larger protest.
“InfraVest and the county government said they have held briefings for residents, but the truth is, I’ve lived here all my life and I never received any notice about the briefings,” said Cheng Teng-kun (鄭登坤), who joined the hunger strike seven days ago.
“We checked the meeting records and found that only 18 people in the four affected communities took part. I suspect there’s a secret deal between the county government, the township office and InfraVest,” he said.
Cheng said that according to InfraVest’s plan, some of the wind turbines would be as close as 100m to 200m to residential buildings, adding that he was worried about the noise and electromagnetic waves that they could engender.
“I’ve read that in some countries, wind turbines must be at least 1km away from residential buildings,” Cheng said.
No official responded to the protest, and the demonstrators vowed to continue their campaign.
In a written document, Infra-Vest said there is no law in any country stating how far a wind turbine must be from a residence, and that noise could be reduced or controlled.
It added that the electromagnetic waves produced by wind turbines are lower than those produced by electronic appliances, such as microwave ovens.
The Taipei Grand Mosque yesterday said its earlier decision to cancel Eid al-Fitr celebrations on Sunday to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan would stand, even though there have been no new domestic cases of COVID-19 in more than a month. It will be the first time in 60 years that the event has not be held at the mosque. The Ministry of Labor had asked all mosques to suspend Eid al-Fitr celebrations and prayers this year, due to COVID-19 concerns, and encouraged Muslims to pray at home. This year Ramadan began on April 23 and is to
KAOHSIUNG VOTE: A city official allegedly wrote a message calling on supporters of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu not to participate in the vote next month Prosecutors on Wednesday initiated an investigation of Kaohsiung Civil Affairs Bureau Director-General Tsao Huan-jung (曹桓榮) for allegedly telling supporters of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) to interfere with a recall vote against Han, while pan-green politicians denounced the mayor and his team for devising ways to obstruct voting. After receiving complaints from residents, the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office launched its probe of Tsao for alleged breaches of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法). Complainants provided evidence that Tsao on Saturday last week wrote on messaging app Line that Han supporters should not vote in the June 6 recall vote, saying:
BILINGUAL ASSISTANCE: The center launched a chat bot that features Chinese and English interfaces to provide foreigners with instant information about the pandemic The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday said that it would discuss with other nations the possibility of allowing businesspeople to visit on a case-by-case basis. Asked about loosening border restrictions, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said at the daily CECC news briefing that while the center is cautious about opening the nation’s borders, it would aim to diminish obstacles for important trade interactions without risking transmission of the novel coronavirus. Several foreign representatives in Taiwan have expressed an interest in the matter and the center would conduct related negotiations with the help of the
DELUSIONAL: The male patient said he did not know that the woman had mental problems, but the court said that her being restrained in isolation should have given him pause The Taiwan High Court has ordered the Jhudong branch of the Taiwan National University Hospital and a male patient to jointly pay a former female patient’s family NT$400,000 in compensation after the man had sex with the woman, who has mental problems, while hospitalized. The 26-year-old woman has been diagnosed with a mental disorder, a symptom of which is that she obsessively seeks to have sex, her mother said. The mother filed a formal complaint and sought damages from the hospital and the male patient surnamed Chen (陳) after finding out that her daughter had sex with the man while
RSS