Members of four Dapu Borough (大埔) families who won a landmark land expropriation case yesterday urged the Ministry of the Interior not to appeal the verdict.
The Taiwan High Court on Jan. 3 ruled that the demolition carried out in Dapu in Miaoli County’s Jhunan Township (竹南) last year, whether partial or complete, of the families’ homes to make way for the expansion of a science park project had been unlawful.
The ministry received the written verdict on Thursday last week and said it would decide whether to appeal within the set 20-day period after meeting with Miaoli officials and academics.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Representatives from the families and the Taiwan Rural Front protested in front of the ministry yesterday, calling on it not to file an appeal and to help the families rebuild their houses.
Holding a model of her demolished house, Peng Hsiu-chuan (彭秀春) asked Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) for help in rebuilding her house.
Since the ministry is in charge of reviewing all land expropriation cases, it is responsible for protecting private property, the protesters said.
The Dapu case was only the tip of the iceberg and represented hundreds of similar expropriation cases nationwide, they said.
“The verdict has clearly pointed out that the handling of the case was a mistake, a crime and a brutal enforcement of the law, as well as a biased systematic error,” National Chengchi University professor Hsu Shih-jung (徐世榮) said.
Ministry Chief Secretary Weng Wen-te (翁文德) accepted the protesters’ appeal letter and pledged that the ministry would listen to everyone’s opinion before making a decision on whether to appeal and that it would review its land expropriation policy.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,