Did The Public See The Sunflower Movement As Justified?

Did The Public See The Sunflower Movement As Justified?

There were criticisms of the Sunflower Movement occupation of the Legislative Yuan with the claim that this was simply just a group of young people acting on partisan political interests

Unsurprisingly, then, there were criticisms of the Sunflower Movement occupation of the Legislative Yuan with the claim that a group of young people acting on partisan political interests that merely claimed they were acting on behalf of majority Taiwanese society and that this would lead to political groups of any stripe attempting to storm the Legislative Yuan in order to try and push through their partisan demands.

This again returns to questions about whether the actions of the Sunflower Movement were justified or not, as well as what qualifies as justifiable political disobedience. Indeed, on the other hand, with the view that the representative institutions of Taiwanese democracy had broken, including the legislature, it became a frequent claim of the movement that occupying legislature by force was to return the legislature to the people. This was even if the act of occupation was technically illegal. But Sunflower participants themselves sometimes evinced a flexible view of the legality of their actions.

Photo credit: Charlie Chang/Flickr/CC

In terms of whether the public view of the Sunflower Movement saw the movement as right or wrong in its actions overall, results of the Sunflower Movement speak for themselves, whether measured in the massive political mobilization of 500,000 people on March 30th, 2014 or the victory of the pan-Green camp in 2016 legislative and presidential elections. Likewise, key Sunflower Movement participants were acquitted of their actions in 2017 as justified civil disobedience.

 

Photo credit: Toomore Chiang/Flickr/CC