The Alliance Of Referendum For Taiwan

The Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan (公投護台灣聯盟 or ART) was a pro-Taiwanese independence organization which had held an occupation encampment outside the Legislative Yuan for several years before the Sunflower Movement. The ART, which mostly consisted of older individuals, called for referendum reform to lower the benchmarks needed to hold a public referendum in Taiwan, which could potentially be a way to permanently settle the issue of Taiwanese independence. The ART’s longtime leader was Tsay Ting-Kuei (蔡丁貴), a National Taiwan University (國立臺灣大學) professor who had formerly been blacklisted from re-entering Taiwan during the authoritarian period for Taiwanese independence activities. 

The ART had been a constant presence at activist events for years and sometimes they provided numbers during key events in the movement, such as during the initial charge into the Legislative Yuan or the attempted occupation of the Executive Yuan. The ART was also among the groups which refused to withdraw on April 10th, leading to police force being used against them. The ART oftentimes acted as a radical force, in being willing to undertake dramatic actions during the movement when other groups weren’t, despite the fact that the ART sometimes saw itself as excluded from the movement mainstream due to its open advocacy of Taiwanese independence. The ART called for nationwide referendum on issues ranging from the issue of Taiwanese independence, to nuclear energy, which they called for during Lin Yi-Hsiung’s (林義雄) hunger strike. The ART later became part of the Free Taiwan Party (自由台灣黨), which ran candidates in 2016 legislative elections, as one of the political parties which emerged from the Sunflower Movement, although they were unsuccessful in getting any candidates into the Legislative Yuan. 

Read Next:

• • Read an interview with Tsay Ting-Kuei

Photo credit: Brian Hioe