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THE 318 MOVEMENT or, as it is better known, the Sunflower movement, began on March 18th with the occupation of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s legislative branch of government, by a loosely organized group of student activists in protest of the CSSTA Taiwan-China trade agreement. The group which emerged as the coordinating body of the Legislative Yuan occupation was known as the “Black Island Youth Front.” While not a previously well known group, it emerged as the most publicly visible representative of the occupation through the prominence of its spokesmen, Lin Fei-fan and Chen Wei-ting.

The line for students to enter the Legislative Yuan on March 20th. Any student with a university ID was allowed into the Legislative Yuan, so long as they were willing to commit to a minimum twelve hours within the premises, so as to prevent constant coming and going.

During the occupation, student occupiers actually only ever were in control of the legislative chamber itself.

As a result of the police blocking the front and side entrances to the Legislative Yuan and an eventual blackout of wi-fi communication within the premises, the occupiers were forced to ferry personnel and supplies by way of ladders to the roof, and communicate with the outside world through walkie-talkie.

The movement’s ability to mobilize students and young people from the beginning was extraordinary. By 12 AM on the night of the initial occupation, several thousand students had gathered outside of the Legislative Yuan, largely mobilized through word of mouth and social media networks. In the author’s estimation, for the first two or three days after the occupation, 80% of the composition of the crowd outside of the Legislative Yuan were students. It was only subsequent that civic society activists became more actively involved and the Sunflower movement shifted in the direction of a broader social constituency.

After a week of impasses in which President Ma Ying-jeou refused to negotiate with the students, students occupied the Executive Yuan on the night of March 23rd in an attempt to escalate the situation. The occupation was conducted by teams of students who assembled off-site, then gathered in previously selected locations at designated times and charged the police barriers surrounding the Executive Yuan, although the author deems it prudent at this time not to reveal further details. Rumors suggest that attempts were also made to occupy the Control Yuan, but there are conflicting claims as to what groups were responsible for the occupation attempt.

Though police violence on a scale not seen since the end of the martial law period was employed that night in order to evict the students, there was, in fact, public backlash against the students from the Taiwanese public. Namely, while the Legislative Yuan occupation was deemed legitimate because of its apparently spontaneous nature, the inherently premeditated nature of the Executive Yuan occupations caused some to view it as illegitimate even in the face of police violence. This was, however, the first time in Taiwanese history two out of the five Yuans were occupied, including the legislative and executive branches of government.

The courtyard of the Executive Yuan on the night of March 23rd.

The high point of the twenty-four day occupation was a march of 500,000 on the Presidential Residence on March 30. As the Taiwanese population is 23 million, this was quite possibly the largest protest in Taiwan since the end of the authoritarian period of government. In regards to the protests to date, very likely March 30th marks the high point of collaboration between student and civic society groups.

Although the occupation came to an end with much fanfare on April 10, protests continue. An hunger strike by former DPP chairman Lin Yi-Hsiung has shifted the movement’s attention in the direction of the forty year old nuclear issue and on April 27th, mobilized approximately 50,000 onto the streets of Taipei and saw the occupation of major intersection Zhongxiao West Road, which only ended later that night with the forcible attempted eviction of the protestors using riot police, tear gas, and water cannons.

While Lin Yi-Hsiung’s hunger strike has since ended, resulting in the calming of some tensions, the CSSTA and the nuclear issue remain at hand. Though the KMT declared the ceasing of work on the controversial “Reactor No. 4”, protestors rejected the KMT’s unilateral declaration on the basis that the decision wasn’t the KMT’s to make; after all, the KMT in itself does not constitute the decision-making basis of government provided Taiwan is beyond the period of one-party rule.

“Die-in” on major thoroughfare Zhongxiao West Road on April 27th. It is estimated that 50,000 took part in the march that day, and Zhongxiao West Road was later the site of sustained police violence against protestors that refused to leave, including the firing of high-power water cannons forty-seven times.

A Labor Day protest by organized labor these past few days only saw the mobilization of about 10,000 to 20,000 in light of the historic weakness of Taiwanese labor, though not without physical confrontation with police outside the Ministry of Labor. But what becomes increasingly evident at present is the degree to which this political crisis will not simply fade away. With the recent turn of the protests towards anti-nuclear politics, some have thought of the Sunflower movement as having ended, or that the longstanding Taiwanese anti-nuclear movement has in some way co-opted the energy behind the Sunflower movement.

This is not the case. Rather, Taiwan is facing a political crisis of democracy and the Sunflower and anti-nuclear movements were both expressions of this crisis. While some has spoken of a return to normalcy, the potential for the situation to explode has not yet faded away. The crisis has not yet been resolved in one way or the other. We are at a point not only in which the direction of future activity remains uncertain, but in which much is up in the air.