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World Service,03 Jan 2022,9 mins

The "Wild Lily" protests in Taiwan

Witness History

Available for over a year

Taiwan’s Wild Lily student movement in 1990 was the biggest student protest the country had seen and was a key turning point in the country’s path to democracy. For six days thousands of students camped out in the central square in front of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in the capital, Taipei. Martial law in Taiwan had ended just a few years earlier but the country was still governed by the KMT party, which had been in power since the 1940s. The students were angry at a presidential election with only one candidate, the incumbent president, and called for wide-ranging democratic reforms. Caroline Bayley has been talking to Chiu Hua-Mei, who took part in the Wild Lily movement. PHOTO: A huge logo of the Wild Lily movement is seen under Taipei's Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall in January 2008 (Patrick Lin/AFP/Getty Images)

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