Zone Expropriation Destroys Homes 02"Hsinchu's forced seizure of farmland sold to consortia for speculation, Shezidao's bitter cry, every mayor has muddled through, decades of suffering

(Continued from previous article) Taiwan's five major disputed zone expropriation cases cover an area of up to 4,710 hectares, affecting more than 100,000 people, with residents' protests lasting for decades and causing enormous impact on their lives. Among them, the Hsinchu case has seen the longest resistance, with the Zhudong Erchongpu case having been fought for 41 years. Liu Ching-chang, spokesperson for the Zhudong Erchongpu Self-Rescue Association, said that the zone expropriation system is a bad law that harms people's rights and conflicts with the Constitution, and called on the central government to abolish the zone expropriation system as soon as possible and for the Hsinchu County Government to terminate all disputed cases.

Li Hua-ping, spokesperson for the Shezidao Self-Rescue Association, said, "Ours is a whole-area zone expropriation. The Constitution guarantees the people's right to survival, right to work, and right to property, while zone expropriation severely violates basic human rights." (Compiled charts can be found at the end of the article)

Hsinchu Taiwan Knowledge Economic Park: claimed to be national construction yet over-expropriating land and repeatedly changing land categories, utterly lacking integrity

Chen Yi-hsu, vice chairman of the Puyu Self-Rescue Association, said that the Taiwan Knowledge Economic Park plan began in ROC year 93, when the Executive Yuan cited it as a major national construction project. During this period, 11 task force meetings were held, and disputes persisted throughout. The biggest dispute is that "the law explicitly stipulates that major national construction projects shall not exceed 142 hectares," yet the plan proposed more than 400 hectares, which residents cannot accept. Another dispute is that a major national construction project should have a competent authority, but this case had none, and it was not until after ROC year 103 that the public interest and necessity of the case were supplemented.

"Since it is a major national construction project, why is the process so sloppy?" Chen Yi-hsu believes this process has already violated procedural justice. In addition, 40 hectares in the plan were allocated to National Chiao Tung University free of charge, seriously affecting residents' rights. Before this case, there were also five expropriation cases related to school establishment, three of which involved national universities, including NCTU, National Taiwan University, and National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. However, of the 20 hectares allocated to NTUST, only 7 hectares were used to build one building, and the remaining campus area was beyond its capacity to develop. NTU only came to build one building, and even directly changed the land category of NTU's second phase into a green energy industry zone. "Delta Electronics said it would invest 5 billion, then didn't come, and the Hsinchu County Government then said it would change it to an AI smart industry zone. The remaining NTUST campus was also said to have its land category changed."

Chen Yi-hsu said that with such repeated changes, residents simply cannot trust them. They repeatedly asked the Hsinchu County Government and the Ministry of Education but received no response. "After the expropriation case passed, the urban planning committee also did not conduct any review." Chen Yi-hsu strongly criticized that the government repeatedly expropriates land in the name of major national construction and national university establishment, and that the Hsinchu County Government uses the pretext of home visits to conduct lobbying in practice, constantly using "farmland is worthless" to persuade residents to agree to development, causing some landowners to also join in land speculation. The vacancy rate in the Zhubei area has consistently been among the highest in the country, and this is inseparable from zone expropriation.

Chen Yi-hsu called out, "On August 28, the Ministry of the Interior's urban planning committee will conduct its 12th review. I hope the expropriation case for the Taiwan Knowledge Economic Park can be terminated!"