Liao Pen-chuan: Defending the Amendment of the Land Expropriation Act as Institutional Violence

Lead image/ Munch

On December 13 last year, the amendment to the Land Expropriation Act was passed, showing us that the government's master is not the people, but that it amends the law for powerful developers and releases benefits to land-development conglomerates such as financial groups, construction companies, and politicians. Moreover, without a clause-by-clause discussion in the first reading, the ruling party's legislators proposed to send it directly to the second reading, and on the final day hastily held cross-party negotiations, and finally completed the amendment with their dominant legislative power. Its brutal nature is no different from the behavior of excavators destroying farmland.

Just as advanced democracies treat expropriation as "the most last-resort measure," the Land Expropriation Act should return to the spirit of the Constitution's protection of basic human rights (the right to subsistence, the right to work, and the right to property), serving as an institutional norm constraining expropriation. But in Taiwan society, the Land Expropriation Act not only fails to make expropriation the most last-resort measure; more tragically, the Land Expropriation Act is actually the most useful tool for those in power, and even more, the most terrifying weapon faced by the weak who are expropriated. Once institutional constraints become institutional violence, the human tragedy of the strong preying on the weak cannot be brought to an end.

The Land Expropriation Act causes two main social problems: one is "excessive land grabbing," and the other is "displacement." Therefore, the first priority in amending the law should be to curb excessive expropriation through due process (including prohibiting expropriation of specific agricultural zones, clarifying necessity, and a hearing system with substantive public participation), and then to avoid displacement through reasonable compensation (including full compensation and resettlement plans).

But the result of the amendment shows that the government not only turns a blind eye to the tragedies created during the implementation of land expropriation (frontline enforcement personnel know this best), but also disregards the Constitutional Court's Interpretation No. 409, which states that "legal provisions should not be spared in detail" regarding expropriation, and ignores the core problems pointed out by civil society's proposed amendment version, and further rejects the research results commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior itself. It turns out that the ultimate purpose of this government's amendment is to "defend" a useful tool and institutional violence. Thus, on the one hand, it raises the banners of land justice and market-price compensation to deceive society; on the other hand, it uses polls claiming that more than 70% of the public supports the government to bully society; and finally, it vilifies the people's protection of their homes as merely a matter of monetary compensation.

This is a conscious scam of knowing the law, manipulating the law, and playing with the law. President Ma let the Executive Yuan recklessly mess with the Land Expropriation Act, and further activated the absolutely dominant legislative power granted by the people, trampling on the people and land justice. Civil society should strongly demand that someone in the Executive Yuan be held responsible, and that the shadow puppeteers behind the amendment step down and apologize to society.

Taiwan society really should reflect: how could it elect a bunch of ugly politicians to trample on itself? And this unjust regime dared to do this before the election; after the election, what can it not do or would it not dare to do? If people do not thoroughly awaken, one can foresee land-grabbing expropriation spreading like beacon fires everywhere after the election. (The author of this article is an associate professor in the Department of Real Estate and Built Environment at National Taipei University.)

Further Reading
Defending Land Justice: Farmers' Movement Goes to the Countryside to Launch Local Actions
Without Land, Where Is Justice? Farmers Publish Advertisements to Voice Their Concerns Collectively
A Few Words on Actions Intervening in the Land Expropriation Amendment and State Violence
Lawyer Zhan Shun-gui: The Ma Government's Housing Justice Is a Lie! A Lie! A Lie!
In Pursuit of Fairness and Justice, the People Still Must Work Hard: After the Passage of the Land Expropriation Amendment