Residents of New Taipei City’s Daguan (大觀) community rallied outside Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) headquarters yesterday, calling for the DPP to rein in Veteran Affairs Council moves to tear down their homes.
More than 20 members of a self-help association for the Banqiao District (板橋) community and students protested outside the party’s headquarters in Taipei, pushing against police and pasting paper to the entrance, demanding that the DPP avert a planned demolition next month.
“Not one of the DPP’s promised public housing units have yet to be constructed, but it is moving to uproot people from their homes,” student protester Chen Kuan-po (陳冠博) said, adding that the council sought to evict residents in a lawsuit that did not acknowledging the site’s “historical context.”
The 72 households sued by the government had inherited or purchased homes built decades ago on government-owned land, according to a contract with the National Women’s League, which was responsible for the nearby military dependents’ village, Chen said, adding that the residents’ lack formal land or property rights.
“The government could choose to use other measures, such as allowing residents to purchase the land,” he said.
Chen said the Veteran Affairs Council had offered to consider selling the land to residents, but later changed its stance.
“The government approved electricity, water and postal addresses for our homes, so why has it suddenly turned around and declared them illegal decades later,” said resident Yang Chia-mei (楊家梅), the widow of one of the community’s original military veterans.
Resident Lee Miao-jung (李眇蓉) said that she had rebuilt her home with permission from the local district administration office after it was torn down to make way for a road-widening project.
She had also paid housing taxes for years, Lee said.
“At the time, many people were not clear about the details of the law and did not know that they had no property rights over unregistered homes, while the government quietly left them completely undisturbed for more than 50 years,” Taiwan Association for Human Rights housing specialist Lin Yen-tung (林彥彤) said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS