Activist groups yesterday staged a rally outside the Changhua County Government to protest against the local government’s plan to expropriate farmland inside South Changhua Industrial Park in Sijhou Township (溪州) to accommodate factories, which they criticized as development at the cost of farming and a source of environmental pollution.
The protest, which was spearheaded by Changhua County Environmental Protection Union and Taiwan Rural Front, involved more than 100 demonstrators from local farming communities and environmental protection groups, who held banners and acted out skits to vent their frustration over the land expropriation plan.
South Changhua Anti-Industrial Pollution Self-help Group speaker Chung Man-man (鍾滿滿) said it is very likely that the plan has links to bribery from certain stakeholders in the private sector.
Photo: Chang Tsung-chiu, Taipei Times
The land that the Changhua County Government seeks to expropriate belongs to Taiwan Sugar Corp, she said, adding that the county government plans to reserve the land for a cluster of predominantly tire factories, including areas set aside for tire manufacturers Kenda Tires and Cheng Shin Rubber Industry Co, she said.
Part of the land in the proposed expropriation overlaps with the Golden Agricultural Corridor Plan set up by the Council of Agriculture, which was initiated last year to curb land subsidence in Yunlin and Changhua counties, Chung said.
The plan aims to boost soil and water conservation in the two counties by establishing afforestation and dry farming areas spanning 1.5km on both sides of the high-speed rail line.
“Agriculture is not only necessary for Sijhou Township [in Changhua County], but for all parts of Taiwan. We object to any industrial development in the area. We will continue to protest until the Changhua County Government drops the expropriation plan,” she said.
Changhua County Environmental Protection Union secretary-general Shih Yueh-ying (施月英) said the tire factories located along the west coast of Taiwan discharge wastewater containing toluene, a toxic chemical, into the ocean following a crude process of sedimentation and filtering, which poses a grave threat to the ecology of the Choshui River (濁水溪) and endangers the fisheries along the Changhua County coast.
The toxic waste also jeopardizes the habitat of the endangered Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins, which live in the waters along the west coast of Taiwan, she said.
Saying the county government in May issued a notice expressing its hopes to sign a one-year property lease with Taiwan Sugar Corp, she said it was an expedient move to “buy time” so as to work out details of the expropriation proposal, whose term of validity ends in September.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS