Many articles have been published this week saying that Monday was the 10th anniversary of the occupation of the legislative chamber that marked the beginning of the Sunflower movement. While they deal with the reasons behind the movement, the role of the students and the repercussions today, there are aspects that bear fleshing out.
While the movement started with a protest against the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) attempt to push through a controversial cross-strait service trade agreement and the non-transparent nature of the process, it was not instigated by political parties or political figures. Although it was students who occupied the building, the movement itself was initiated at least in part by civic groups and non-governmental organizations.
Also, although the occupation began on March 18, 2014, it did not end until almost 23 days later, on the evening of April 10. During those three weeks, the entire nation was transfixed.
With the exception of one night in particular, things did not turn violent, but at the time, nobody had any idea how things would transpire. People were asking how the authorities in other countries might have reacted to their congress or parliament being paralyzed by protesters. The longer the occupation went on, the more fraught the situation became, with fissures showing in society, within the KMT, among the movement itself, between interests in business, academia and politics, and even internationally.
Even those largely sympathetic to the students were uneasy about the unprecedented nature of the interruption to the operation of the state and the sense of unease only grew. What happened in those three weeks was a distillation of all the political, intergenerational, historical and nationalist tensions that have resulted from 300 years of Taiwan’s complex and nuanced story. The situation could have spun out of control.
For almost the duration, the building had emblazoned on an external wall Chinese characters reading: “When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty.” It was not a good look for a nation that prides itself on its democracy, but the contrast was the point.
Then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) initially refused to engage with the occupiers, but eventually agreed to talks, albeit stubbornly holding on to his plan to pass the agreement. Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) called on Ma to listen to the occupiers’ objections; then-legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) won plaudits for his handling of the matter, directing the police not to intervene and allowing the international press, as well as food and drink, onto the occupied legislative floor, but in so doing inflating tensions between himself and Ma. Then-premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) did the opposite, directing police to forcibly remove an offshoot occupancy of the Executive Yuan in the early hours of March 24, winning Ma’s gratitude, but the condemnation of others for unleashing violence on members of the public, as well as the threat of a lawsuit for attempted murder from one injured actvist.
University professors held civics classes outside, teams of lawyers offered their services to students in legal trouble as a result of the occupancy, China Unification Promotion Party founder Chang An-le (張安樂) threatened the students with violence, the then-opposition Democratic Progressive Party was accused of trying to gain political advantage and Merrill Lynch said that the situation could possibly affect Taiwan’s GDP.
China said it wanted the agreement passed.
This all happened at a time that the young generation was regarded as largely uninterested in politics. That was proven to be false.
KMT legislators are trying to revive the agreement, literally at their very first opportunity since their failure a decade ago. Has the KMT learned nothing?
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