Crew working for
the Farglory Group at the site of the Taipei Dome are ripping beautiful trees
around the area and turning to goons to scare off environmental activists
In the past year
I’ve often referred to Miaoli County as Taiwan’s “Far West,” a sobriquet
attributable to the fact that pretty much anything goes there when it comes to
the ability of local officials getting their way, often with the help of bought
local police and, when necessary, gangsters. The corollary was that such
lawlessness would not occur in more “civilized” parts of Taiwan, such as in
Taipei. Think again.
As we all know,
construction projects — roads, bridges, large infrastructure — are notorious
for the kickbacks and corruption that accompanies them. What is also known is
that following the nationwide crackdown on organized crime in the 1990s, the
major triads reinvented themselves as “businesses” and many of them went in the
construction sector. For one thing, such efforts were more lucrative than
running prostitution dens, underground gambling, or selling drugs, while the
“clearer” nature of their work made them more socially acceptable, not to
mention less likely to attract the attention of law enforcement. Better
therefore to threaten officials and get a lucrative construction deal than
break knees or engage in shootouts that are bound to land gang leaders in jail.
What happens,
then, when ordinary citizens oppose construction projects, land grabs, urban
renewal, or development that fails to take the law or the environment into
account, is that the goons come out. They have their deals with land
developers, city councilors and officials, and they expect to be able to go
ahead and build without accountability, even if the proper public consultations
expected in a healthy democracy do not happen.
I’ve already
written at length about such behavior in Yuanli, Miaoli County, where a foreign
wind power company, with the complicity of local officials and the central
government, has gotten away with breaking the law (and the bones of elderly
local residents). We’re seen similar incidents at Taipei’s Huaguang Community,
where residents who refused to be evicted to clear the land for a major
luxurious construction project were fined by the government and harassed by
individuals of questionable backgrounds — not to mention an unexplained fire
that destroyed the house of an elderly woman who refused to leave (she later
died). Lapses were also noticed in Shilin over the Wang Jia property, which
also faced demolition, and where thugs passing off as construction workers
physically assaulted protesters, including young women. In all those cases,
police did nothing to protect citizens and showed every sign that it was siding
with the construction companies and their government backers.
Now this is
happening again, this time in Taipei’s east side, and the developer in question
is the Farglory Group. While everybody’s attention is turned to the large
anti-nuclear protests on Ketagalan Blvd and outside Taipei Main Station, the
construction crew has been busy removing, and in some instances sawing off, old
trees on Guangfu S Rd, Zhongxiao E Rd and Yixian Rd. Farglory and its
contractors were reportedly given the green light by the Taipei City Government
to get rid of the trees to expand the site of the Taipei Dome, which is being
built on the site of the old Tobacco Factory. Trees lining the sidewalk, along
with those on the road dividers on Guangfu, were to be transplanted.
The situation on Guangfu S Rd |
As with
everything else that has prompted protests in the past two years, the source of
the problem is lack of transparency and the government’s making a mockery of
democratic procedures. Activists turned up, and things got a bit ugly early on
Friday when some of them attempted to block construction workers who were
trying to uproot the trees. Some sat on the roots and were practically hacked
away by the workers. Police looked on, documented the protesters’ efforts, and
warned them that if they got injured in the process, it was their fault.
More worryingly,
intimidation is now also a factor in the crisis, which continues as I write
this. Young female protesters have been followed my masked individuals at
night, so much so that the activists have instructed women who need to walk
around the area to always do so in pairs.
We did a walk-by
earlier today and experienced some of that intimidation ourselves. After
chatting with the activists, we decided to walk along Zhongxiao E Rd towards Yixian
Rd. As we were walking, we came upon an opening that gave onto the large
construction site. We stopped to take a look, and my wife began taking
pictures. Immediately, a large construction worker parked at a little shack by
the gate started shouting at us and told us that we were not allowed to take
pictures. Given that we had not entered the construction site and were on a
public sidewalk, I went over to the man — a largish guy with missing teeth and
every sign of a betel nut-chewing habit — and asked him why. No explanation was
given; we just couldn’t. I asked him whether we were in Taiwan or in China,
where this sort of thing happens all the time. He assured me that we were in
Taiwan. I had to check.
No sooner had we
resumed our walk than we noticed that we were being followed by a man in his
fifties wearing a gray shirt. We’d seen him chatting with the man I’d just
quizzed. He shadowed us for over 200 meters until we stopped and let him walk
by, whereupon we asked him what he wanted. He pretended to ignore us and turned
left on Yixian Rd. We resumed our walk, turned on the same street, and saw him
having a chat with a police officer right outside the Criminal Investigation
Bureau office. We doubled back, crossed over to the other side of Zhongxiao Rd,
where we were again followed by a man in a similar gray shirt, who eventually
went into the MRT station.
This was
intimidation, pure and simple. They didn’t even make any effort to be subtle,
in fact, as in China they wanted us
to know that we were being followed. Those are the kinds of people who do the
dirty work for the president of the Farglory Group, a man infamous for saying
last year that civic activists who call for justice are hampering development.
With police once
again failing to do its duty to protect citizens (and demonstrating that it is
actually in bed with the developers), it isn’t a bit surprising that the
activist are now receiving protection by a group of very large animal rescuers
from the EMT Tough organization. Those of us who spent time at the legislature
during the occupation by the Sunflower Movement will immediately recognize
them. If police won’t do its job, rough types (some of those guys have
affiliations with organized crime) will do it as society fights back. (Photos by Ketty W. Chen)
New! A Chinese-language translation of this article is available here.
New! A Chinese-language translation of this article is available here.
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