Almost a month after the March 18 start of the Sunflower movement and occupation of the Legislative Yuan, more than 200 people who participated in the protests are being investigated. The right to protest as it is represented in constitutional law is a good starting point to assess the legal culpability of the protesters.
The concept of the right to protest derives from the theory of natural rights and has been defined as the right of individual citizens, when the state does violence to their human dignity, to protect their own rights, freedom and dignity and in the absence of any viable alternative, to protest against laws that have been implemented; or as one of the guarantees of constitutionalism, being the right of citizens to stand up and protest when a government is deemed to have abused its powers and violated the constitution of the country, seeking to restore the correct running of constitutional government.
A 1962 ruling in Japan came to this conclusion regarding the criteria required to exercise the right to protest: The conditions for allowing the right to protest are met when, first, the fundamental order of democracy is seriously threatened, so that the continued survival of the constitution itself is in jeopardy; second, when the state can clearly and objectively be shown to have behaved in violation of the law; and third, as the last resort to restore law and order when all other legal avenues provided for by the law and in the constitution have been found lacking. The first of these has been criticized for being too strict.
The Sunflower movement was born when a group of protesters consisting predominantly of university students took the relatively extreme measure of occupying the legislative chamber after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chang Ching-chung (張慶忠) unilaterally announced the end of the review into the cross-strait service trade pact.
Chang’s action, however, was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back, the last of a long line of incidents dating all the way back to then-Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits chairman Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) visit to Taiwan in 2008, when the government attempted to suppress citizens’ rights to expression, assembly and the freedom to conduct business.
These incidents also included the political turmoil of September last year, when the executive branch of government tried to interfere in the running of the legislature by attempting to force Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to resign, thereby violating the principle of the separation of powers.
To these were added the signing of the pact and its potential impact upon people’s rights to employment and to make a living, not to mention Taiwan’s very status as a nation, which are major issues concerning constitutional government. As the government negotiated the agreement behind closed doors, the lack of transparency and the sense of urgency in getting it passed in the legislature has meant that whether it is passed is no longer a simple matter of procedure. Also, it is debatable whether the judiciary will be able to solve the resulting constitutional crisis.
In the past, governments guilty of committing human rights violations have, under the guise of upholding the law, pursued those who have exercised their right to protest, saying that their actions were illegal. The students who took part in the Sunflower movement may well face prosecution, either under civil or criminal law.
If any of these individuals are taken to court, whether the right to protest will be upheld in court will be up to the judges called upon to hear these cases, and their compassion and humanity.
Lee Ren-miau is a law professor at National Chung Cheng University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Victory in conflict requires mastery of two “balances”: First, the balance of power, and second, the balance of error, or making sure that you do not make the most mistakes, thus helping your enemy’s victory. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has made a decisive and potentially fatal error by making an enemy of the Jewish Nation, centered today in the State of Israel but historically one of the great civilizations extending back at least 3,000 years. Mind you, no Israeli leader has ever publicly declared that “China is our enemy,” but on October 28, 2025, self-described Chinese People’s Armed Police (PAP) propaganda
Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian (薛劍) on Saturday last week shared a news article on social media about Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan, adding that “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off.” The previous day in the Japanese House of Representatives, Takaichi said that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute “a situation threatening Japan’s survival,” a reference to a legal legal term introduced in 2015 that allows the prime minister to deploy the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The violent nature of Xue’s comments is notable in that it came from a diplomat,
China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, entered service this week after a commissioning ceremony in China’s Hainan Province on Wednesday last week. Chinese state media reported that the Fujian would be deployed to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea and the western Pacific. It seemed that the Taiwan Strait being one of its priorities meant greater military pressure on Taiwan, but it would actually put the Fujian at greater risk of being compromised. If the carrier were to leave its home port of Sanya and sail to the East China Sea or the Yellow Sea, it would have to transit the
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom, sparked by the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, took the world by storm. Within weeks, everyone was talking about it, trying it and had an opinion. It has transformed the way people live, work and think. The trend has only accelerated. The AI snowball continues to roll, growing larger and more influential across nearly every sector. Higher education has not been spared. Universities rushed to embrace this technological wave, eager to demonstrate that they are keeping up with the times. AI literacy is now presented as an essential skill, a key selling point to attract prospective students.
RSS