Following 15 months of preparation, the Daybreak Project, a 300,000-word English-language online interactive encyclopedia and oral history archive about the 2014 Sunflower movement, is to be officially launched on Friday.
Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of the student-led protests in March and April 2014 against the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s handling of a cross-strait service trade agreement.
The protesters occupied the Legislative Yuan’s main chamber in Taipei for almost 23 days and at one point stormed the Executive Yuan building, with thousands of supporters participating in public rallies nationwide in a show of solidarity with those in the chamber.
Compiled by Taiwan Foundation for Democracy fellow Brian Hioe (丘琦欣), the project is to be available to the public for free online and includes more than 50 interviews with key players in the Sunflower movement, including Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆), Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), a breakaway group called the “Jianmin Liberation Zone” (賤民解放區) and the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan.
“The project is in part an attempt to understand the confluence of social forces which led to the explosion of the Sunflower movement, in part an attempt to track the complex subjective motivations which undergirded participation in the movement and lastly an attempt to record recent history before it becomes lost,” Hioe wrote on the project’s Web site.
“The Sunflower movement has been a pivotal event thus far in the history of Taiwan in the 21st century and it deserves to be recorded in history in as detailed a manner as possible,” he said, adding that the project welcomes outside contributions.
The “subjectivities underlying participants of the Sunflower movement prove a valuable record of the unfolding and continued development of Taiwanese identity in the 21st century,” Hioe said.
Hioe, Lin and other leaders of the movement this week traveled to the University of California at Berkeley to participate in a two-day symposium titled “Sunflowers and Umbrellas: Social Movements, Expressive Practices, and Political Culture in Taiwan and Hong Kong.”
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
Taiwan is to extend its visa-waiver program for Philippine passport holders for another year, starting on Aug. 1, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said on Friday. Lin made the announcement during a reception in Taipei marking the 127th anniversary of Philippine independence and the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The decision reflected Taiwan’s commitment to deepening exchanges with the Philippines, the statement cited Lin as saying, adding that it was a key partner under the New Southbound Policy launched in 2016. Lin also expressed hope
RSS