People all over the world are resorting to mass demonstrations to express grievances and press unmet demands. While, in some ways, popular protests are a triumph of democratic principles and civic activism, they also carry serious risks, including violence by and against protesters.
Their pervasiveness today points to a failure of governments, democratic and authoritarian alike, to hear, let alone meet, the needs of their people.
The issues at stake are wide-ranging. In Catalonia, demonstrators are demanding the release of nine separatist leaders facing lengthy prison sentences for their roles in the regional government’s failed attempt in 2017 to secede from Spain.
In Chile, economic inequality is fueling increasingly violent demonstrations, triggered by a fare hike on the Santiago metro.
In Lebanon, protests against corruption and poor economic stewardship are now targeting the removal of the country’s decades-old sectarian kleptocracy.
In Hong Kong, protesters are resisting China’s increasing encroachment on civil liberties and the rule of law in the territory, and have already forced their government to withdraw the extradition bill that started it all.
People may resort to the “body rhetoric” of street protests when they feel that they cannot effect change through democratic channels, such as the ballot box.
In Moscow, protests erupted this summer after opposition candidates were barred from running in the September elections for the city’s parliament. Lebanon’s protest movement is driven by a similar lack of genuine democratic options. Hong Kong residents cannot exactly vote out China’s leaders.
Protests can be a powerful means of communicating commitment to a cause, not only to leaders, but also to fellow citizens, who might be inspired to join the fight. They can attract the attention of the outside world: protest leaders from Hong Kong have explicitly sought international support.
However, mass demonstrations often require significant sacrifice. Acts of “civil disobedience” — blocking traffic (as has occurred in Beirut and London) or paralyzing the airport (as in Hong Kong) — can be a powerful way to draw attention to a cause, but they also put their participants at risk, whether from tear gas or arrest.
Even where peaceful protests are technically legal, participants may break laws, whether by trespassing or failing to file the proper paperwork, or open themselves up to charges of vague crimes like “disturbing the peace.”
In the US, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s, and today’s climate demonstrations share a key feature: Almost all participants were nonviolent, and yet faced repeated, sometimes large-scale arrests.
The risks are compounded by deliberately violent protesters, who may view their actions as justified, but ultimately undermine their own cause by alienating potential allies, justifying government crackdowns, and endangering their fellow protesters. Hong Kong — where the vast majority of protesters are nonviolent — is a case in point.
Whether a protest movement succeeds or fails depends largely on the media. “Police suppress violent protests” is obviously a very different headline from “Police violently suppress protests,” and neither sends the same message as “Protesters and police clash.”
Moreover, images of dramatic moments — like a high-profile arrest or a human chain — can leave a deeper impression on the wider public’s imagination than debates or slogans ever could. Some of the more powerful protests against the Vietnam War included members of Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Theater wearing costumes that evoked the suffering the conflict was causing.
Likewise, the four black college students who protested segregation in 1960 by sitting quietly at the whites-only Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, might not have helped spur a mass movement to integrate dining facilities across the US south had local media not shared the footage. By the same token, the media may not have reported sympathetically on their cause had they not provided a stark illustration of the indignity and arbitrariness of racial segregation.
Protesters’ lack of options for confronting damaging or unjust government policies lends legitimacy to their actions. How, other than street demonstrations, could the people of Hong Kong have mobilized global media coverage of the proposed extradition bill?
The same goes for the Hungarians protesting a “slave labor law,” which drastically increases the overtime companies can demand; the Filipinos condemning extrajudicial killings of suspected low-level drug dealers and users; and Brazilians opposing the environmentally catastrophic expansion of agribusiness in the Amazon rainforest.
In all three countries, right-wing populist leaders have been undermining the democratic systems that brought them to power and should hold them accountable.
Yet, protesters should beware: The media’s influence cuts both ways. Images of a few protesters in Hong Kong smashing windows or throwing gasoline bombs undermine the narrative that it is the Chinese state that is acting against the rule of law. Now, it is China’s leaders who can use the global media — this time to discredit the protests.
With inequality, populism, and authoritarianism still on the rise, it seems likely that mass demonstrations will remain a fixture of global politics for the foreseeable future. Governments will, no doubt, seek to quash them.
However, in the absence of greater institutional responsiveness to popular grievances and demands, people are unlikely to stay home.
Aryeh Neier is president emeritus of the Open Society Foundations and a founder of Human Rights Watch.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS