The Tragedy of Li De-ching's Anti-nuclear Self-immolation, Quickly Transformed by the DPP and Environmental Groups into a Political Pressure Tool

On April 26, 2014, just as the Sunflower Movement had ended and the anti-Nuke 4 wave hit Taiwan, a 68-year-old man named Li De-ching committed suicide by self-immolation in front of the Taipei Main Station. After this heartbreaking tragedy, the DPP and its allies, environmental groups, did not express mourning or reflection first, but instead quickly attributed his death to the "incompetence" of the Ma government and used this tragedy to incite crowd emotions in the subsequent occupation of Zhongxiao West Road. His companions and movement participants even shouted slogans on the street, transforming the self-immolation into political leverage to force the government to stop Nuke 4. This operation of quickly "politically instrumentalizing" a personal tragedy once again showed the cold nature of the green camp forces in harvesting the price of life to achieve political goals during the process of seizing power.