Let’s All Pick a Fight with Formosa Plastics

We received the following which was circulated before the press conference by academics in support of Professor Tsuang Ben-jei (莊秉潔) of National Chung Hsing University’s (NCHU) department of environmental engineering who is being sued by Formosa Plastics Group for comments he made at an Environmental Protection Administration EIA meeting regarding cancer rates around FGP's Mailiao Plant in Yunlin County.

讓我們卯上台塑吧
文／吳明益
Let’s All Pick a Fight with Formosa Plastics

WU Ming-yi

A few days ago I received a letter from JHOU Gui-tian and CHEN Ji-jhong asking whether I could join in a petition against Formosa Plastics for having filed a lawsuit against Professor TSUANG Bing-jie.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corporation and Mai-Liao Power Corporation. On closely reading the civil complaint that was attached to the letter I discovered that the Formosa Plastics affiliates and their lawyers accused Professor TSUANG of having injured the reputations of the companies by having cited or transmitted information contained in a study and report that the [Taiwan] Environmental Protection Administration had retained Chung Hsing University to conduct and produce concerning factory emissions of heavy metals and dioxin. I recalled having seen the news on these reports last year but never guessed that Formosa Plastics, rather than taking to heart the numerous incidents of worker and environmental safety, would instead take this drastic legal action against the professor seeking the unimaginable sum of forty million New Taiwan dollars (approximately 1.3 million US$).

I was reminded of that book about Diane Wilson; An Unreasonable Woman.

Diane Wilson lives in Calhoun County on a bay in Texas where fishers and shrimpers are everywhere, a town where there isn’t even a stoplight. She had a fishing operation and had been noticing that the catch was constantly decreasing. Then one day she read a report that said the US EPA ranked her county as the most polluted in all the USA. Then it started to make sense – the dead dolphins, the inedible contaminated shrimp, the wetlands that were choking, and birds gone extinct and all the while the cancer rates shooting up. Something had happened in Lavaca Bay.

The chemical plants thought Diane. Based on her own observations the pollution coming from the Taiwan-based petrochemical manufacturers in the bay was becoming more and more obvious.

It was just around this time that the people in Yilan County rejected the Sixth Naphtha Cracker plant, so Formosa Plastics took its three billion US dollars and went to Texas announcing expansion of its plant there into a modern technologically advanced zero pollution plant. When Diane organised environmental groups to stop the expansion plan many local people suspected that she was taking money from people who wanted the plant to locate in their country, or that her data was faulty. There were those who sang the mantra of “high tech” and those who lambasted Diane for speaking out when so many people were out of work. There were even those who said the Formosa Plant would help reduce the incidence of mental illness in the area…….

In order to attract “The Pearl of Texas” and alleviate unemployment in the area, Calhoun County spent two hundred and fifty million dollars to dredge the bay so that Formosa’s ships could get to their port while extending to Formosa Plastics all kinds of favorable tax treatment. To what end? Well, WANG Yong-cing, according to one reporter mentioned in the book, was just a pirate aristocrat who would get up early in the morning, go for a run, do his pushups and pass the days in relative austerity. In the meantime he basically let all of his factories pollute like crazy, dumping their waste into the harbour or into the ground and emitting vinyl chloride and ethylene chloride poisoning the bodies and souls of the employees and the people living around their plants.

So why didn’t the officials get to the truth about Formosa’s operations? Because Formosa covered up the test results, falsified records, bought off officials and paid off scholars to produce favorable reports. Diane wrote: “their spokesperson appears to be sincere and so does Formosa, it was as if they thought the dirty air they were emitting, the big stinky fuel warehouse, the transfer pipes, they made it all, just as though they were manufacturing rotten bananas….”

Diane Wilson was only sued, she also received death threats, her lawyer was bought off, but she fought on for years. She went on several fasts in protest of the plant and was able to force Formosa to sign a “zero pollution” agreement. From this time Formosa Plastics gained enormous negative publicity in the US, while Diane, “the woman who was as unreasonable as the ocean” began winning all manner of awards for her work. Clearly, the Earth had ruled in Diane’s favor.

So, with all its record of destroying the land, with all its reputation as a louse, now this company is suing Professor TSUANG for “spreading information that is damaging to Formosa Plastics’ reputation”? If Formosa Plastics has any reputation still intact, then surely it must be worth more than a bunch of rotten bananas!

If it were not for scholars like Professor TSUANG standing up to these giant polluting monsters, these companies without a conscience would be free to go on spinning lies and squeezing the land for every bit of wealth they can leaving behind a legacy of devastation, while all the time making pretensions of being a charitable company.

No doubt Formosa Plastics will be able to find scholars to support them and they may be able to win a symbolic victory in the courts. But there is no question that Formosa’s substitution of the courts for scientific research and adding such a huge claim of damages, while perhaps only a small symbolic victory, its intended effect is to “chill” any thing that may come out of the academic community that could be construed as critical of Formosa. To be sure Professor TSUANG is a target, but the intention is to instill fear into the hearts of all scholars who might come up with research results that are anything but complimentary to Formosa.

When Formosa Plastics denies the truth, “they don’t have any guilty conscience,” Diane Wilson says in her book An Unreasonable Woman [called The Woman Who Dared to Stand Up and Challenge Formosa Plastics in Chinese edition]. And the way Yilan County rejected plans by Formosa Plastics to build the No.6 naphtha cracker in their county is a testimony to Taiwanese spirit:
"Three years ago, Shih said, Wang had promised them that his plants would be so clean that goldfish could be raised in the wastewater from his Yilan plants. Wang Yung-Ching said he wanted the wastewater from his plants safe enough to drink. But what have been the results? The Lung De plant in Tapei has received the most fines ever by the government. Every worker in Yilan knows that Formosa emits illegal pollution in the night and that it shuts off its wastewater pipes before inspection by the Public Health Agency. So they could not trust them to deliver what they promise."
(An Unreasonable Woman: chapter 28 “Island of Fire and Solidarity” pg 344.)

Naturally, I joined the petition and I also decided to return to Taipei to join the press conference on 29 April. We plan to initiate a movement at the press conference that will spur a movement of “I too will stand up to and pick a fight with Formosa Plastics” so as to let Professor JHUANG’s value become 100 million, a billion, ten billion, 100 billion --- to become the incalculable value of a life, the incalculable value of a clear blue sky.


讓我們卯上台塑吧
文／吳明益

幾天前我收到周桂田、陳吉仲教授的來信，問我是否願意參與一個連署運動的發起。原因是，台塑控告了中興大學的莊秉潔教授。

⋯⋯ 提告者是「臺灣化纖」與「麥寮汽電」，我仔細讀了莊秉潔教授寄來的民事庭通知寄達信，看著台塑這個心是塑膠做成的企業聘雇的律師，指控莊秉潔教授以引用環保署委託中興工程的調查報告，所進行相關工廠排放重金屬與戴奧辛煙塵的研究報告，涉及「指摘或傳述足以毀損原告公司名譽」。我記得去年就曾看到這則新聞，沒想到近年屢屢發生工安事故的台塑不但不思檢討，還厚顏地付諸行動，向莊教授求償不可思議的四千萬元。

這讓我想起黛安威爾森(Diane Wilson) 那本《卯上台塑的女人》。

黛安威爾森所居住的德州灣卡杭郡到處都是漁夫跟捕蝦人，她和她的朋友都沒有在任何有掛交通號誌的地方開過車，經營一個漁屋頗為自得。只是海灣的漁獲似乎愈來愈少，狀況愈來愈差，有一天她發現，卡杭郡在當年環保單位的報告中，是全美最毒的地方。這裡牡蠣無法食用、捕不到蝦、海豚死亡，濕地上鶴、塘鵝絕跡，居民罹癌率高居不下……絕望的拉瓦卡灣究竟發生了什麼事？

化工廠。黛安這麼想，隨著她的自主調查，這間來自臺灣化工廠的排放污染物的證據愈來愈顯明。就在此時，被宜蘭反六輕拒絕的台塑，帶著三十億美元來到德州灣，宣稱要擴建高科技無汙染的廠房。黛安組成環保團體出面阻止，只是當地居民或懷疑她收了別郡的錢只為趕走台塑，或質疑她的資料的正確性，或搬出「我們才科學」的咒語，或以高失業率的痛苦來反駁她，甚至認為台塑設廠可以減低罹患精神病的人數…….。

為了仰賴這個「德州灣之珠」來解決失業的困境，卡杭郡就先花了兩億五千萬來疏浚航道讓台塑船隻可以進入，給予稅務優惠。結果呢？王永慶就像一個「強盜貴族」（書中一位記者的用詞），每天清晨起床健身、慢跑、伏地挺身，節儉度日，然後放任他的工廠把重金屬汙染的汙水倒到海灣，或滲透到土層中汙染地下水，讓氯乙烯、二氯化乙烯飄浮在空氣中，傷害居民與員工的肺跟靈魂。

那麼為什麼官員查不到台塑汙染的事實？因為台塑會掩蓋偵測井、捏造樣本、買通官員、雇用學者自製完美的觀測報告……。黛安寫道：「佛瑞德（台塑代表發言者）看起來很誠懇，台塑也是，好像他們排出來的髒污廢氣，他們又大又臭的油庫，他們成千上萬根輸送管，他們製造的一切一切，只不過是在製造爛香蕉……。」

威爾森不只是受到控告而已，她受到死亡威脅，律師被金錢收買策反，仍堅持和台塑纏鬥數年，絕食明志，硬是讓台塑簽下零排放的協議。台塑自此在美國聲名狼藉，而這個「跟大海一樣不講理的女人」則獲獎連連。地球已然判了黛安勝訴。

這樣傷害土地、形象惡質的工廠，竟然有顏面控告莊秉潔教授「意圖散布於眾……指摘或傳述足以毀損原告公司名譽之事項」？如果台塑仍有名譽存在，那必然是比爛香蕉更廉價的事物吧。

如果沒有像莊秉潔教授這種挑戰巨大汙染怪獸的學者，這些無責任感的公司只會更從容編織謊言、從土地上榨取財富，甚且擬態成慈善家。台塑大可尋求學界支援，以學術挑戰學術，若官司勝訴取象徵性的賠償即可。但台塑以官司取代研究，加以巨額求償，說穿了目的只有一個，就是引發學術界的寒蟬效應。他們要的不只是莊教授停止研究，更要其他正在默默以專業對抗他們的學者感到恐懼。

莊秉潔教授以他的專業揭發台塑的廢氣排放可能致癌，對他而言獲得什麼利益？唯有勇氣的名聲而已。台塑這場控告，證明了對抗粗野的、惡質的企業是有價值的，那就是價值四千萬的勇氣。

黛安威爾森說台塑的人否認真相時，「沒有一點心虛」，在〈熱情團結的島〉這章裡，提到宜蘭如何擊退六輕的，她說那是一種台灣的精神，「存在於他們的靈魂中，那股純粹的熱情，不是因為憎恨王永慶、中油，或是國民黨而產生，這股熱情的源頭和生命，仰賴東北角南雅奇石區中的峭壁險礁和一路延伸至龍洞、鹽寮的岩岸，福隆海灘的海水，蔚藍得讓人忘記其他顏色，彷彿只是簡樸的卯澳漁村上方，另一片晴朗無雲的天空。」(p.361)

我當然在第一時間就回信加入連署的發起，也決定回台北參加周日（4/29）的記者會。我們希望在之後，能激發出另一個「我也要卯上台塑」的運動，讓莊教授的勇氣增值到一億、十億、百億、千億……乃至無價如你我的生命，以及一片晴朗無雲的天空。


Also see:
Update: FPG-Tsuang lawsuit