Two years after the Dapu forced demolition case, the Taiwan Rural Front calls for rebuilding on the original site and a review of the Land Expropriation Act
Today marks the 2nd anniversary of the forced demolition of 4 households in Dapu, Miaoli. In the face of rulings against the Miaoli County Government by the Taichung High Administrative Court and the Supreme Administrative Court in early last year and in May of this year respectively, the successive Miaoli County magistrates still have not responded directly. The Taiwan Rural Front issued a statement solemnly demanding that the county government publicly apologize and rebuild the 4 Dapu households on their original sites.
In addition, the Taiwan Rural Front also called on governments at all levels to stop excessive and indiscriminate expropriation cases, including the Zhubei Taiwan Knowledge Economic Park, and at the same time restart the amendment process of the Land Expropriation Act, abolish zone expropriation, and realize land justice.
From the excavator destroying farmland 5 years ago that led to Dapu grandmother Zhu-Feng Min drinking pesticide and taking her own life, to today 2 years ago, when the Miaoli County Government took advantage of anti-expropriation residents traveling north to petition and mobilized to demolish 4 Dapu households including the Zhang Pharmacy, indirectly causing Zhang Pharmacy's male owner Zhang Senwen to take his own life out of suspected depression, the Taiwan Rural Front said bluntly that the Dapu forced demolition is the worst example of expropriation and forced relocation in recent years.
The Taiwan Rural Front pointed out that although the court ruled against the Miaoli County Government, former county magistrate Liu Cheng-hung always insisted that the forced demolition of the 4 Dapu households was for "boosting the economy," and firmly refused to admit fault or take responsibility. Current county magistrate Hsu Yao-chang also "followed Liu's rules," preferring to continue wasting taxpayers' money in court to clean up Liu Cheng-hung's mess rather than face the long-standing mistakes.
Recently, in response to considerable information pointing directly to Liu Cheng-hung's reckless development during his tenure causing county government deficits, former Miaoli County magistrate Liu Cheng-hung responded that developments during his tenure, such as the high-speed rail special zone, created a total value of 15 billion in land pending sale. In response, the Taiwan Rural Front said that this statement clearly shows the fact that local factions broadly opened financial sources by forcefully expropriating people's land. In particular, the Dapu area, originally expropriated under the name of science park development, now has newly built vacant houses standing everywhere, and many land brokers speculating in real estate have moved in. All of this has become ironclad evidence of local political-business collusion with organized crime for profit.
The Taiwan Rural Front said that in the face of the Dapu forced demolition case, the government not only failed to reflect on its actions, but instead intensified larger-scale zone expropriations including the Zhubei Taiwan Knowledge Economic Park, Taoyuan Aerotropolis, and Danhai Phase 2. Taking the Taiwan Knowledge Economic Park case as an example, it is estimated that 447 hectares of farmland will be expropriated, of which only 13% is planned for industrial use, while residential and commercial zoning is planned to be as much as 3 times that. Moreover, the industrial content keeps changing again and again, but what does not change is the insistence on using zone expropriation to plunder people's land on a large scale, shooting the arrow first and drawing the target afterward, which is completely inconsistent with the principles of public interest, necessity, and last resort that serve as the prerequisites for land expropriation.
The Taiwan Rural Front believes that whether in the current state of Dapu or the planning of the Taiwan Knowledge Economic Park, it is evident that the chaos of land enclosure is everywhere across Taiwan, China. Therefore, in addition to calling on the Miaoli County Government to publicly apologize, rebuild the 4 Dapu households, and stop excessive and indiscriminate expropriation cases, the central government should immediately restart the review process for amending the Land Expropriation Act, abolish zone expropriation, which is abused by local governments as a means of land speculation, and implement land justice.