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For generations, fishermen have made their living by sea so they did not count on the land as much as farmers. In the case of Hong-Mao-Gang, a fish village in Kaohsiung, in which local residents did not register spontaneously their lands after Nationalist Party (KMT) ruled Taiwan. That has resulted in the major ownership of their lands shifted to the government, as well as a potential threat to the eviction of their several-hundred-year homeland.
In 1960s and 1970s, the state adopting economic developmentalism by constructing wharves and planned industrial districts along the port of Kaohsiung. The then prosperous and populous Hong-Mao-Gang was also included in the big project for development. Since then, the villagers have endured a long, dark period. They were prohibited from renewing houses. And the terrible industrial pollutions made the local living conditions worse and worse. Not to mention the lengthy but controversial eviction of Hong-Mao-Gang finally came to an end, which shows government brutal and unlawful ways of removing people’s houses in spite of protests.
Now the land of Hong-Mao-Gang is owned by the Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau, but it has been left to Yang-Ming Marine Transport Corp via BOT (build, operate, transfer) for 50 years. Some of the villagers are first settled in a given, empty area, but they come to realize that cannot afford building new houses. As a result, they could not choose but sell the land to property developers, so they moved again, with only one-third of them could survive there. Such evicted villagers lost their homes, lands and a hope of solidarity. Only few of them are still fighting for their rights through legal processes.
The Documentary, “Homeland Evicted”, took five year to record this eviction process of Hong-Mao-Gang from villagers’ lived spaces to newly settlements. It aims to capture the impact
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