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.
The majority of parents surveyed in northern Taiwan favor the suspension of all on-site classes at schools from the junior-high level and below amid a surge in domestic COVID-19 infections, parent groups said yesterday. About 84.4 percent of respondents in a survey of 2,912 parents in northern Taiwan, where the outbreak is the most serious, said they supported suspending classes, the Action Alliance on Basic Education, the Taiwan Parents Protect Women and Children Association, and the Taiwan Love Children Association said. The groups distributed questionnaires to parents in New Taipei City, Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan and Hsinchu city and county from Saturday morning
ASEAN BATTLEGROUND: Japan and Australia could be drawn into Pacific tensions as China sets its sights on the Diaoyutai Islands and further beyond the first island chain Tensions between China and the US in the Indo-Pacific region are expected to intensify, the National Security Bureau and Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, recommending that Taiwan continue to emphasize its shared values and interests to encourage resistance to Chinese aggression. US commitments in the Indo-Pacific region are expected to continue unabated despite the war in Ukraine, as Beijing takes advantage of the conflict to expand its influence in the region, the agencies said in reports delivered to the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee on Sunday, ahead of a hearing yesterday on regional developments and trends. Although Russia’s invasion of
ONLINE REPORT: Confirmed cases filling out the online contact tracing report can check a box to indicate that a close contact had received a booster dose, an official said The guidelines for diagnosing COVID-19 have been revised to include people aged 65 or older who test positive with a rapid test that is confirmed by a healthcare worker, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday, as it reported 65,794 new local infections. The CECC had first announced the change on Monday, before publishing the new guidelines. Starting today, people aged 65 or older, regardless of whether they are undergoing home quarantine, home isolation or self-disease prevention, can be classified as a confirmed COVID-19 case by a healthcare professional, based on a positive result from an antigen rapid test, said
INFLUENCERS: The Chinese Communist Party uses social media to paint itself in a positive light, while promoting historical ties between Taiwan and China Government agencies are considering measures to counter China’s use of Taiwanese Internet celebrities to conduct “cognitive warfare” campaigns in Taiwan, a source said yesterday. China has trained local Internet celebrities to help it spread propaganda as part of its “united front” efforts against Taiwan, the source said, adding that Beijing was also using TikTok, a Pinterest-like app called Xiaohongshu (also known as Little Red Book) and other social media to influence young Taiwanese. Citing the Mainland Affairs Council, the source said that officials had warned people cooperating with China that they could face fines or other punishments. Stipulations under the Act Governing Relations
RSS