Taiwan Church News
3480 Edition
Nov 5 – 11, 2018
Headline News
Thousands Of Protesters March Against Energy Policy U-turn And Urge Saving Algal Reefs
Reported by Chiu Kuo-rong
In the afternoon on November 3, thousands of protesters take to the streets of Taipei City to protest against Prime Minister William Lai’s U-turn energy policy abolishing the coal-fired Shenao power plant project in New Taipei City and instead substituting a liquid natural gas(LNG) terminal in Taoyuan.
Dr Yeh Guan-perng, a physician of Chang-Hua Christian Hospital, director of Air Clean Taiwan and acting as the organizer of this rally, criticizes the ruling party DPP’s energy policy having derailed from the due process. As a long-term partner of DPP, when she was an opposition party in the congress, Dr Yeh denounces DPP’s unexpected policy U-turn as “autocratic democracy” and urges voters should teach DPP a lesson in the coming nine-in-one election and referendum vote.
In the assembly of demonstrators, Professor Lin Hui-chen of Department of Life Science, Tunghai University, raised to the public an urgent question: if the Formosan cypress trees over 1,000 year-old are always well protected and preserved in Taiwan high mountains, why the algal reefs grown over 7,600 years-old along the coast of Datan Borough in Guanyin District should be wiped out for LNG terminal?
Besides, according lawyer Chen Hsien-cheng of The Society of Wilderness, there are lots of endangered natural species found around the algal reefs, including about 1200 Moray eels(over 50 cm in length), over half a million Eriphiidae(crab species), Polycyathus chaishanensis (Endemic species in Taiwan) and the close-to-extinction scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini).
Translated by Peter Wolfe
