Dapu residents and their supporters held demonstrations in front of the Presidential Office and the Control Yuan on Wednesday asking for help, after excavators sent by the county government partially flattened the rice paddies of farmers who refused to give their land to the county government earlier this month.That sounds ominously like PRC Government tactics. Relocate protesters away from sites of controversy until a time when their protests will be futile against a fait accompli. And since when were police the tool of County Government's to ensure the economic goals of private corporations? This dangerously sets a precedent of police being seen as partial and acting against the rule of law - one that says a person owns a property until they sign off on the land and hand over the deeds. In this case, several farmers have not handed over the deeds but the County Government is trying to bamboozle residents by saying that THEY have the deeds. Well now, BOTH can't have deeds to the same lands at the same time. I think this begs for the interpretation of the courts. I would advise Dapu residents to sue the County Government and police officials for aiding and abetting robbery. First on the list to be cited: Huang Chih-chun (黃智群), deputy director of the county government's Economic Development Department.
At the time, the Presidential Office said it would look into the matter and reply to the residents within a week.
“Look at what the county government is doing now, even before a week has passed,” Dapu Self-Help Association spokeswoman Yeh Hsiu-tao (葉秀桃) told the Taipei Times by telephone.
At about 9am, close to 100 police officers were dispatched to block off roads to Dapu. Soon afterward, excavators moved into rice paddies that had been partially destroyed earlier this month.
“This time, they flattened everything, trucked away mud and rice plants, and turned the farms into a big construction site,” said Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), a National Tsinghua University student who witnessed the scene.
A video clip shot and uploaded by a self-help association member showed police officers trying to prevent the farmers from getting to their land and taking away those who insisted on doing so.
“One woman was taken in a police car and released somewhere on the coast kilometers away from the village,” Chen said.
Terry Guo, your name gets muddier every day. Perhaps it would be best if you move all your businesses to China and leave Taiwanese alone. They need your economic beneficence like a hole in the head.
