Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Two leading student representatives of the Occupy Legislature Movement received a police guard on their way to address a mass sit-in Taipei yesterday.

Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆), a National Taiwan University graduate student and Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), a graduate student at National Tsing Hua University, were guarded by plainclothes police when they took part in the rally in front of the Presidential Office Building in protest against a cross-strait service trade agreement with China, the Taipei City Police Department told a press briefing yesterday.

Protesters pour onto the crossroads leading to the Jingfumen on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei yesterday to participate in a mass rally against the cross-strait service trade pact.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times

Hundreds of thousands of “black-clad army” members took to the streets in Taipei yesterday, wearing black to symbolize what they call the government’s “black-box,” or opaque, handling of the cross-strait service trade pact as they called for the agreement to be retracted and Taiwan’s democracy to be safeguarded.

The demonstrators also wore yellow ribbons that read: “Oppose the service pact, save Taiwan” and chanted slogans such as “Protect our democracy, withdraw the trade deal” as they carried sunflowers, which became a symbol of opposition to the trade deal after the media dubbed the student-led protests the “Sunflower student movement.”