Lawyers Participating In The Sunflower Movement
Lawyers were present during the Sunflower Movement not only to offer their services in defending arrested protesters, but to formulate legal challenges to government actions
Lawyers have taken a leading role in many Taiwanese social movements in recent years. Lawyers, for example, have had sometimes to be ever-present in struggles against forced evictions in order to ward off development companies or police attempting to demolish buildings, carrying around all the necessary legal documents at all times. With environmental struggles as the movement against the Kuokuang naphtha cracker, lawyers pushed for legal challenges against cracker as a way to realize the demands of the movement. Likewise, lawyers are present in order to defend arrested protesters and ensure their release by police, sometimes offering their services pro bono on signs in the Legislative Yuan encampment.
All of these were also seen during the Sunflower Movement, in which lawyers not only attended to arrested protesters, but helped formulate the demands of the movement in terms of the Cross-straits Oversight Bill presented to legislature as a permanent solution to the issue of trade agreements with China. High-profile lawyer politicians such as then-DPP mayoral candidate Wellington Ku (顧立雄) and activist lawyer Handy Chiu (邱顯智), later a New Power Party candidate.