Residents of the Daguan community in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) yesterday rallied outside New Taipei City Hall, demanding zoning changes to the land they occupy and inclusion in any discussions on relocation.
About 20 residents shouted slogans condemning government resettlement plans, which they said were “unclear” and “impractical.”
Residents of the community face forced eviction following the conclusion of an extended legal battle with the Veterans Affairs Council, which operates a nearby veterans home that owns the land on which they reside.
Photo: Lai Hsiao-tung, Taipei Times
They claim to have the right to reside on the site because of historical connections to a former military dependents’ village built there in the 1950s.
“The New Taipei City Social Welfare Department would be responsible for any potential resettlement. We know it has had meetings with the Veterans Affairs Council, but we were not invited,” residents’ self-help association member Huang Ping-hsun (黃炳勛) said, adding that the residents fear that resettlement assistance would only be offered to disadvantaged residents already eligible for government benefits.
The council in May said that only 25 of the area’s 58 buildings are inhabited by their owners, while only four owners meet government standards to receive benefits for the poor or disadvantaged.
The residents also criticized the city’s zoning scheme, which designated their homes as a “legally empty lot” in 2002.
“They should not have included us in the veterans home’s ‘social service’ land without taking into consideration our residences and communicating with us,” Huang said, calling on the city government to take action on a petition to remove the “social service” designation, which would make it difficult for the council to develop the area.
Only the council can grant a reprieve to spare the residents from eviction, as they have exhausted their legal appeals, he added.
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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