Protesters in Taipei demand apology for Dapu demolitions
CNA 2013-07-24 12:14 (GMT+8)
Civic groups and Dapu residents took part in the protest in Taipei on July 23. (Photo/CNA)
Civic groups and Dapu residents took part in the protest in Taipei on July 23. (Photo/CNA)
Several civic groups staged a protest on Katagalan Boulevard in Taipei on Tuesday, demanding that the government apologize for the forced demolition of four homes in the village of Dapu in northern Taiwan’s Miaoli county.
The protesters, from the Dapu Self-Help Organization, the Alliance for the Defense of Farming Villages, and Taiwan Rural Front, said if the government does not meet their demands by Aug. 18, they will call on the public to “demolish” the government.
President Ma Ying-jeou, Vice President Wu Den-yih, Premier Jiang Yi-huah, and Miaoli county magistrate Liu Cheng-hung must apologize to the owners of the four demolished homes, the demonstrators said.
They also called on the central government to investigate an alleged hike in land prices by Liu in Maioli county.
The central government should amend the Land Expropriation Act and suspend all land acquisitions nationwide until then, the protestors said.
Carrying banners that read “demolish the burglar-like government,” the protesters shouted “apologize, compensate, return the land to the owners, investigate scandals and amend laws.”
Taiwan Rural Front spokesperson Frida Tsai said Taipei turned a blind eye to the demolition of the homes and allowed the county government to go through with it.
On July 18, four homes in Dapu were demolished to make way for a science park that is being built by the county government.
The demolition was carried out while Dapu residents and civic groups were protesting that morning in Taipei. The home owners returned in the evening to find their houses reduced to rubble.
The civic groups at Tuesday’s protest displayed pictures of three locations at which the rubble, including the home owners’ personal belongings, was dumped.
The protesters said one of the home owners, Chang Sen-wen, was asked to pay NT$242,000 (US$8,000) in “moving expenses” after his house was demolished. This is the exact amount that Chang received from the county government in compensation for the expropriation of his six ping (19.8 square meter) home, the demonstrators said.
Perng Ming-hwei, professor emeritus at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu in northern Taiwan, said at the protest that there are already too many science parks in Taiwan and they have a very low utilization rate.
Also on Tuesday, police arrested Hsu Shih-jung, a land economics professor at the National Chengchi University in Taipei, for attempting to breach a restricted area in front of the new Ministry of Health and Welfare. President Ma was scheduled to attend a ceremony there at around 11 am to inaugurate the ministry.
Hsu, along with a student from Taipei’s National Taiwan University and other protesters against the Dapu demolition case, were there to try to petition Ma but were repeatedly chased away by the police. Hsu and the student, surnamed Lu, were later taken to a nearby police station.
Police said both of them may be charged with disrupting public order and obstructing an officer in discharge of his duties.
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Miaoli magistrate hails ‘god-given’ chance to demolish 4 Dapu homes
CNA 2013-07-20 09:14 (GMT+8)
The four homes were at the center of a dispute between homeowners and the local government. (Photo/Wang Chih-huang)
The four homes were at the center of a dispute between homeowners and the local government. (Photo/Wang Chih-huang)
Four homes that were at the center of a dispute between homeowners and the local government in Miaoli county in northern Taiwan on whether they should be torn down to make way for a planned industrial park were demolished on Thursday.
Following months of debate and confrontation over the issue, county magistrate Liu Cheng-hung on Thursday saw what he described as a “god-given” window of opportunity to send in a demolition team to remove the homes.
Liu said he made the decision when he learned that both pro and con camps were visiting Taipei to air their respective views regarding the demolition of the four hold-out homes in the Dapu district of the Chunan industrial park area.
Some 900 homes had already been demolished in the area, but one of the homeowners of the four remaining properties insisted on keeping their ancestral home and another refused to budge in protest against the county government’s heavy handed bulldozing of their rice field at the time of harvesting.
They quickly amassed support from civic groups and others and had held petitions and protest to highlight their rights and cause.
Escorted by a strong police presence, the demolition team on Thursday tore down a six-ping (19.8 square meter) drug store, a 1.3-ping (4.3 sq m) shanty house, homeowner Ko Cheng-fu’s entire house and the wall of another family’s garden in spite of strong resistance from property owners, activists and supporters.
The demolition work was originally scheduled for July 22, Liu said, but he got word Wednesday night that two major groups supporting the four families would be going on a petitioning trip to Taipei Thursday morning.
Pro-government groups, led by county council speaker You Chung-tien, were also visiting the capital to make their case. These include homeowners in the vicinity whose houses had already been torn down in preparation for building the industrial park.
“This is a god-sent opportunity,” Liu said, adding that he would not let it slip away. “So we decided to move ahead the schedule” as there would be less chance for conflicts and scuffles would occur without the presence of the homeowners and their supporters and those who support the plan, he said.
Cheng Li-wun, spokeswoman for the Executive Yuan, said the Cabinet respects the local government’s authority to do what it should “according to law and according to a resolution of the urban planning committee of the Ministry of the Interior.”
Wu Yi-chen, a lawmaker of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, criticized the local government for taking advantage of some of the homeowners’ absence — an act that she said would only aggravate their grievances against the government. “The county government should apologize and give the people a good explanation,” she said.
The dispute over the local government plan to demolish the four houses in the county’s Chunan township continued after a meeting called by Vice President Wu Den-yih on the issue on July 6 ended inconclusively.
The residents of the Dapu area began their protest against the demolition order in July 2010, which led to intervention by Wu, who had asked the county government for a postponement. The protesters and their supporters said Wu promised that the homes should not be demolished.
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