Approved urban land consolidation project reviews should be reopened as part of a rule rewrite, campaigners and residents affected by the projects said yesterday during a protest outside the Ministry of the Interior in Taipei.
About 10 people from Taoyuan City’s Dahu (大湖) and New Taipei City’s Wenzaijun (塭仔圳) areas accused the ministry of failing to address ongoing project proposals for legal changes to protect the rights of individuals.
“We are here to protest ministry officials’ passivity,” said Lin Tzu-chin (林子勤), a member of a self-help association for residents affected by the Dahu project. “They have not responded to our cases and have not said if the new review process will discuss whether the projects are necessary and in the public interest.”
Urban land consolidation aims to spark development by freeing space through the reallocation of plots, but has drawn criticism for low property owner agreement thresholds to win approval, as well as the automatic inclusion of public land regardless of tenants’ wishes.
The Council of Grand Justices last year ruled that some regulations violated procedural justice by failing to ensure that all interested parties meaningfully participate in the drafting stage, with plans to propose legal amendments announced by the ministry last month.
Wang Cheng-chi (王成機), a senior specialist with the ministry’s department of land administration, accepted the protesters’ petition, saying that the ministry intends to address existing projects by amending the regulations on compensation, including removing provisions allowing developers to apply to local governments for demolitions against hold-out residents.
Lin said the proposed change’s effects would be limited because corporations still have legal rights to carry out forced demolitions.
“Compensation is a future matter — what we care about is whether or not our homes can be demolished now, because we were not able to participate in the review of these projects when they were approved,” he said.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS