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 Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS