Dozens of Tainan residents and their supporters yesterday staged a demonstration outside the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) headquarters in Taipei, protesting the local government’s move to expropriate land as part of its railroad construction project.
Holding a giant picture combining Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) and former Miaoli County commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻), the protesters accused Lai, a DPP member, of acting in the same way as Liu, a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member who was involved in another land expropriation controversy.
DPP Department of Social Movements Director Kuo Wen-pin (郭文彬) came out to meet the demonstrators and promised to refer their petition to senior party officials. Dissatisfied, the crowd demanded a meeting with DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and tried to force their way into the building.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
“In 1996, the original plan was [for the city government] to borrow land from the owners to construct temporary tracks while the underground railway is under construction, and return the land to their owners afterward,” said Hsu Shih-jung (徐世榮), a professor at National Chengchi University’s Department of Land Economics. “But in 2007, the project took a 180 degree turn, and now the land are to be forcibly seized.”
“The government is robbing people of their land. It is a human rights issue, as the forced expropriation does not meet the requirements for expropriation at all,” Hsu said.
He accused Lai of “maliciously manipulating” behind the scenes by spreading rumors that the residents are protesting because they want more money for compensation.
The affected residents have come to DPP headquarters because Lai was nominated by the DPP, “thus the DPP should take political responsibility,” he added.
According to the current design by the Tainan City Government, as many as 323 houses in the city center would be torn down, and residents are to be resettled in a housing complex on the outskirts of the city and would have to pay for the new housing units.
Chen Chih-hsiao (陳致曉), spokesperson for the residents’ self-help organization, said Tsai has known about the controversy for about two years, but has avoided talking about it.
“It has made us really worried. If the DPP wins the presidential election [next year], will they act the same as the KMT and seize land in the name of building transportation infrastructure?” he asked.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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