Land Expropriation Law Amendment Showdown Today: Farmers Take to Ketagalan Boulevard for the Third Time
Text and photography / Chung Sheng-hsiung PNN Public Television News Topic Center reporter
Lead image / Farmers hold up placards reading "Help" and an image of the Founding Father, protesting that the Executive Yuan version of the land expropriation amendment bill fundamentally violates the people's rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
The Legislative Yuan will vote today (12/13) on the "Land Expropriation Act Amendment Draft," and farmers' groups chose to take to Ketagalan Boulevard for a third protest last night, under the slogan "Land justice cannot be compromised," hoping the government will incorporate the public interest and necessity of land expropriation into legal regulations, and that specially designated agricultural zones may not be expropriated. At the same time, negotiations between the ruling and opposition parties over the land expropriation amendment draft were also held inside the Legislative Yuan; in the end, specially designated agricultural zones could still be expropriated if they involve "major construction approved by the Executive Yuan," but if there is a dispute, a hearing must be held. In addition, all of the civil-society proposals regarding the assessment of public interest and necessity for zone expropriation, and the inclusion of a real estate appraiser system in expropriation pricing, were not incorporated into the Executive Yuan version of the draft.
Chen Ping-hsuan of the Taiwan Rural Front revealed that Legislative Yuan President Wang Jin-pyng stressed during today's ruling-opposition negotiations that today's review of the land expropriation amendment draft would definitely go to a vote, meaning that whether the amendment passes depends entirely on the Kuomintang's attitude; but during today's negotiations, KMT legislators Liu Sheng-liang and Chao Li-yun took a negative stance toward civil-society opinions, which could affect the final vote result. The negotiations between the two parties continued until after nine o'clock at night before ending, and ultimately "no expropriation of specially designated agricultural zones," "incorporating public interest and necessity assessments into zone expropriation," "full compensation for expropriation," and "including a real estate appraiser system" were confirmed to have fallen through, but Interior Minister Jiang Yi-huah agreed that when nationally significant construction expropriates agricultural zones and a dispute arises, a hearing should be held.
The farmers' groups suffered an almost total defeat on the "specially designated agricultural zones" and "zone expropriation" items, but the ruling-opposition negotiations were not entirely fruitless; the Executive Yuan version decided to include "general expropriation requires submission of a public interest assessment report," "relaxation of the resettlement plan standards for affected households," and "the land expropriation committee must have more than 1/2 civil-society representatives" (the civil-society version called for 2/3). Taiwan Rural Front spokesperson Tsai Pei-hui stated that today (12/13), starting at 10 a.m., the farmers' groups will monitor the amendment process outside the Legislative Yuan, and they also threatened to mobilize votes against legislators who vote in favor of passing the Executive Yuan version of the land expropriation amendment draft.
Scholar: Executive Yuan version of the land expropriation draft amounts to legalized violence!
"Land expropriation is not a matter of compensation or headcount; the key is to protect and uphold basic human rights!" Hsu Shih-jung, a professor in the Department of Land Economics at National Chengchi University, harshly criticized that in recent years the government's expropriation cases have completely failed to abide by the premise of protecting human rights, nor have they abided by the Constitution; the rights and interests of the people of Taiwan are as if they were still under martial law, and democracy and freedom have simply not been realized. He sharply criticized the government for not daring to raise taxes on financial conglomerates, yet forcibly expropriating the people's land for use by those conglomerates, which is fundamentally "robbing the poor to feed the rich" and "treating the people like soft persimmons to be eaten."
Liao Pen-chuan, associate professor in the Department of Real Estate and Built Environment at National Taipei University, compared it to last year's "backhoes destroying farmland" in Dapu, Miaoli, stressing that the of the amendment process for the land expropriation draft is no different from the Dapu incident. He believes that the Executive Yuan version of the draft intends to achieve land justice through "market-price expropriation," but that is merely being generous with the whole public's money, dismantling the people's land and homes, and is not the core of land justice.
"If the amendment passes, it will allow legalized violence to continue to exist!" Liao Pen-chuan believes that the land expropriation ordinance concerns the protection and safeguarding of basic human rights, and is also a government duty and a source of governing legitimacy; if the Executive Yuan version of the draft, which cannot ensure the people's rights and interests, is ultimately passed, the state will lose its legitimacy. Lu Shih-wei, a lawyer with the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, lamented that if the government kills people openly, then the people still have a target for revolution; now that the government has learned to imitate the language of social movements but will amend in a bad law, leaving the people unable to resist, it is恐怕 more despicable than killing people openly.
Hsu Yu-hung, chair of the Airport MRT A7 Self-Rescue Association, who was forced onto the streets because of zone expropriation and the pre-sale system, lamented that ever since her home was expropriated without cause and then sold to financial conglomerates by the government under the innovative pre-sale system, her whole family has been worried about ending up on the streets at any time, and her child studying away from home often calls to ask her, "Has our home been demolished?", leaving her deeply helpless. She hopes the Legislative Yuan will not forcibly pass the Executive Yuan version of the land expropriation amendment draft, because she "only wants her child to still be able to find the front door when coming home."
The Taiwan Rural Front stated that at 10 a.m. today it will mobilize people to go outside the Legislative Yuan to monitor the amendment process, and if the Legislative Yuan ultimately passes the Executive Yuan version of the draft, it will certainly punish with votes the legislators who voted in favor. (This article is reprinted from the PNN Public Television News Topic Center)
Further Reading
1212 Final Battle Moment - Resisting the Devouring Empire of Land Expropriation
Land Expropriation Amendment (1) Farmers Take to Ketagalan Boulevard on the 12th to Monitor the Amendment
Land Expropriation Amendment (2) Six Persistences of the Civil-Society Version Against Excessive Expropriation
Opposing the Legislative Yuan's passage of the Executive Yuan version of the land expropriation amendment draft, about 500 farmers "returned to Ketagalan Boulevard" last night, demanding that the government, now that it finally has a chance to amend the law, should not crudely pass an amendment bill that cannot substantively protect the people's property and prime farmland.
Liu Ching-chang, chair of the Defend Rural Homelands Alliance, tears up a slip of paper bearing the words "Executive Yuan Version of the Land Expropriation Act Amendment Draft," symbolizing the farmers' groups' determination to firmly oppose the Legislative Yuan's passage of the Executive Yuan version of the draft.
The result of the land expropriation amendment will come out today. Can "land justice" be realized?