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Residents vow to
protect land
FARMERS’ FURY: Angry residents say their best
farmland is going to be taken by the government, which will ruin their town and
ages-old livelihoods
By Loa Iok-sin / Staff Reporter
Members of nongovernmental
organizations and representatives of residents of Gongliao District, New Taipei
City, protest at the legislature yesterday against a government land seizure
plan to make room for a development project.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Vowing to protect their land, dozens of
residents from New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮) yesterday
protested a government land seizure plan to make room for a development project
in the coastal area.
“We, the people of Gongliao, have lived there for hundreds, or even thousands of
years as the indigenous Ketagalan tribe — we are not giving up the land that’s
been passed down from our ancestors,” Lin Sheng-yi (林勝義), a native of Gongliao,
told a news conference at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
“The Construction and Planning Agency [CPA] is collaborating with big
corporations to take over our land — they have no right to seize our land by
force,” he said.
Lin, who is a descendent of the Ketagalan Aboriginal people that inhabited
Gongliao and most of the Greater Taipei area before Han immigrants from China
arrived in Taiwan, said the people of Gongliao had already suffered when plots
of their land were taken over by the government decades ago for the construction
of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
“We’re not going to allow this to happen again,” Lin said.
According to an official document detailing the project released by the CPA,
there are 11 project sites in Gongliao with a total area of 102.56 hectares. The
different sites would be turned into commercial, residential and hotel zones.
Chien Fung-jung (簡豐榮), president of Hemei Community Development Association,
accused the government of trying to destroy the village by taking over the best
farmlands in the community.
“According to the government’s plans, they would take over 40 hectares of the
best flat land in the village and turn it into hotels and residential
complexes,” Chien said. “After the planned expropriation, only land on the hills
that is not arable would be left to us. We cannot grow anything there, the
villagers would be forced to leave and the village would be dead.”
The most common agricultural produce in Gongliao includes rice, watermelon and
green asparagus — all cultivated on flat land.
Goo Tshun-jiong (吳春蓉), a member of the Taiwan Northeast Coast Concord Alliance,
said it did not make sense to build commercial and residential districts in the
area, since some of the sites are very close to the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
“The CPA says that it is trying to bring about 9,500 residents into the area,
but all the sites [they want] are in the area surrounding the nuclear power
plant. Who would want to live next to a nuclear power plant?” Goo asked.
“And isn’t it in the safety handbook that nuclear power plants should be built
in low-density areas away from residential neighborhoods?” she added.
Gongliao is a tourist attraction for its landscape, hiking trails in the
mountains and beach, Goo said, adding that “urbanization as the CPA plans to do
is not suitable for Gongliao, because it would turn it into just another
ordinary small city without character.”
“If the government really cares about Gongliao’s development, it should
tailor-make a plan for Gongliao, with the participation of all residents,” she
said.
“So far, residents have never been consulted in the process of planning such
development projects,” she added.
Goo called on the CPA to suspend the development project until it had held
negotiations with local residents and farmers.
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