Flower revolutions

The History Hour

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, History

4.4 • 913 Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We hear about the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan in 2014. Brian Hioe, an activist who occupied Parliament in Taipei, recalls the events.

We hear from Nino Zuriashvili, one of the protesters at the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003. And Prof Kasia Boddy, author of Blooming Flowers: A Seasonal History of Plants and People explains how flowers have been used as symbols in political history.

Plus, the Afghan refugee who fled as a 15 year old. Waheed Arian, a doctor and former Afghan refugee describes his perilous journey.

We look at the Yellow Fleet of ships, which were stranded in the Suez Canal for eight years. Phil Saul, who looked after the engineers and officers on board the MS Melampus and MS Agapenor in the Suez Canal, recounts his experiences.

Finally, the story of the British afro hair care institution Dyke and Dryden. We hear from Rudi Page, the former marketing manager for Dyke and Dryden's afro hair products.

Presenter: Max Pearson

(Photo: An activist taking part in the Sunflower Movement in Taipei on 21 March 2014. Credit: Mandy Cheng/AFP)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson,
0:10.0	the past brought to life by those who were there. This week revolutions with a floral theme
0:16.3	from Taiwan's sunflower movement to the Rose Revolution in Georgia. Some people bring the food from the houses and share each other. There was
0:27.2	high sense of solidarity. I remember that these days were really exciting for us.
0:34.0	Plus the harrowing story of an Afghan refugee who fled his home country alone at the age of just 15.
0:40.0	The instructions were, get ready tomorrow, you're flying all my life. I had been on
0:44.6	donkeys and horses so for a moment I was absolutely excited and it covered the dangers of
0:51.1	what might happen. Also merchant merchant ships trapped in the Suez Canal for eight years
0:56.6	and the birth of a British Afro-Hare institution.
1:00.0	What it did was it made that longer look, made the hair look healthy, silky and with movement.
1:07.2	That's all to come later in the podcast, but we begin in a part of the world which is the focus of much attention right now. Tensions between China and Taiwan
1:15.8	have simmered for decades and has been a marked uptick in recent months. So we're going back to Taiwan in 2014 and to the events which became known as the Sunflower
1:26.7	movement. That was when students protested against closer ties with China. It was one of the
1:32.4	largest social movements in Taiwanese history.
1:35.0	Rachel Naylor has spoken to an activist who, 10 years ago, occupied two government buildings.
1:41.0	Is the evening of the 18th of March 2014, a university student Brian Hugh is eating
1:47.4	dinner in Taipei, Taiwan's capital, while scrolling social media.
1:51.5	He stops what he's doing. He sees that his friends are storming Taiwan's
1:55.6	parliament. I just got a taxi cab and went over and ran to my friends almost
1:59.8	immediately. When I got there is around 11 PM they were shaking on the gate outside of a legislature and eventually we all kind of clambered over,
2:07.0	pushing up against the police and gone to the parking lot.
2:09.0	That was a point in time in which an initial wave of students had already gotten into the legislature and then mountain occupation and we were kind of outside trying to push our way in to join them.
	...

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