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進入《TAIPEI TIMES 焦點》 Groups call for demolitions in Kaohsiung to be delayed
Residents of Kaohsiung’s Dagouding neighborhood yesterday protest against forced evictions in connection to an urban renewal project, calling for help as several lawmakers on the Legislative Yuan’s Education and Culture Committee visit the neighborhood. Photo: CNA
By Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter
The planned demolition of Kaohsiung’s Dagouding （大溝頂） neighborhood should be put on hold, protesters said yesterday at a rally, as a city-imposed deadline for residents to vacate expired.
About 30 protesters from the Taiwan Anti-Forced Eviction Alliance, Free Taiwan Party and other groups gathered outside of the Democratic Progressive Party’s headquarters in Taipei prior to a meeting of the party’s Central Standing Committee, calling for the government to halt forced evictions and to end opaque decisionmaking by engaging in genuine consultations with local residents.
The demonstrators said the planned demolition of a row of homes in Dagouding — along with the planned demolitions of an Aboriginal village on city-owned land and homes near a fruit and vegetable market in the city’s Sanmin District （三民） — would break promises made by Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu （陳菊） prior to winning re-election in 2014, when she signed a Housing Movement pledge to end forced evictions.
“We are here as ‘debt collectors,’” alliance member Hsu Yi-fu （徐亦甫） said. “If Chen follows through with the demolitions of these three neighborhoods, her promises will amount to ‘bad checks.’”
The protesters criticized forced evictions under Chen, who was a prominent political prisoner during the Martial Law era, serving more than six years in the 1980s for her role in the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident, which saw several prominent dangwai （黨外, “outside the party”） activists tried and jailed by a military court following a march to commemorate International Human Rights Day.
“We are very sad to come here today, because Chen served as the president of our association from 1992 to 1994,” said Lin Yen-Tung （林彥彤）, a Taiwan Association for Human Rights housing specialist. “However, in all of these eviction cases, there was an insufficient level of discussion or exploration of alternative plans before residents were ordered to vacate.”
Wang Chung-yi （王中義） — the chairman of the Zun-hai Foundation, which promotes the culture and history of the Qishan District （旗山）, of which Dagouding is a part — said that the homes in Dagouding were constructed by residents over a sewage channel more than 60 years ago on the encouragement of the local government, only for residents to later be forced to sign over ownership of the buildings in the 1970s, providing the legal basis for the city to order their eviction to make way for a planned waterfront park.
Cheng Yuan-wen （鄭淵文）, head of a self-help association for residents of Dagouding, said residents would physically block any attempts by the city government to force their eviction and called for the eviction order to be postponed until related city water management plans are clarified.
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
