Hundreds of students surprised the nation on Tuesday night when they broke off from an overnight sit-in and occupied the legislature in protest against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus’ handling of the cross-strait service trade pact.
After successfully fending off several evacuation attempts by the police and garnering national support over the past five days, the protest, which the media have dubbed the “Sunflower movement” — the largest student movement since the Wild Lily movement in 1990 that propelled legislative reform.
There are skeptics questioning almost everything about the group of young people — from their storming of the legislative compound and drinking beer in the legislative chamber, to their connections with opposition parties and their knowledge about the trade pact.
Photo: Hsieh Wen-hua, Taipei Times
In particular, there have been many questions about the cause and sustainability of the movement.
The students have been responding to these queries on an hourly basis.
In the legislature and the rallies outside the Legislative Yuan compound, students organized into groups to clean graffiti from the walls, recycle trash and maintain order.
Set up like a well-trained army unit, the students were divided into various teams of logistics, communication, patrol and — with help from volunteer physicians and lawyers — a medical team and a legal team were quickly assembled.
That was partly because the leaders of the movement, National Taiwan University graduate student Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) and National Tsing Hua University student Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), as well as other members of the core leadership are seasoned veterans in social movements despite their youth.
They gained experience from numerous protests in the past two years, including the one against land seizures at Miaoli County’s Dapu Borough (大埔) and the construction of the Miramar resort in Taitung County, the campaign against media monopolization and the anti-nuclear movement.
Well aware of the nation’s political situation, the students have distanced themselves from political parties and stayed away from the so-called “blue-green struggle.”
Quite contrary to what several local media outlets and the KMT portray, most of the students in those protests have been able to explain their cause clearly and stand firmly for what they believed in.
The “Sunflower movement” is more than an overnight phenomenon and should be interpreted beyond these young people’s discontent with President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) governance.
It is the cultivation of the students’ effort in the past two years, during which they defied conventional views about the younger generation — that they could not care less about politics and the world they live in — and showed Taiwanese that they do care and they would take action to make the country a better place — any time and anywhere.
If today’s group of young activists have learned from what happened to the “Wild Lily generation,” some of them are more than likely to become the backbone of Taiwanese politics and social movements in the next 10 years.
From what people have seen so far, the new young activists show a deep caring for the nation and for the purity of politics as it was in the early 1990s.
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) yesterday appealed to the authorities to release former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) from pretrial detention amid conflicting reports about his health. The TPP at a news conference on Thursday said that Ko should be released to a hospital for treatment, adding that he has blood in his urine and had spells of pain and nausea followed by vomiting over the past three months. Hsieh Yen-yau (謝炎堯), a retired professor of internal medicine and Ko’s former teacher, said that Ko’s symptoms aligned with gallstones, kidney inflammation and potentially dangerous heart conditions. Ko, charged with