The use of nonviolent sanctions has been far more frequent
and widespread than usually supposed. They were crucial elements of history-making
struggles in every part of the world and in every decade of the century.
Nonviolent action has worked against all types of
oppressive opponents—and there is no correlation between the degree of violence used
against nonviolent resisters and the likelihood of their eventual success. Some who faced
the greatest brutality prevailed decisively.
A nonviolent movement’s potential for success
degenerates when it tries to incorporate violence into its strategy. Once a regime is
attacked with deadly force, its ability to rally internal support and apply repression is
enhanced.
Mobilizing and maintaining a popular movement geared to
nonviolent action go hand in hand with strengthening a civil society and establishing or
sustaining democracy.
In 1905 and Orthodox priest, Georgii Gapon, persuaded
150,000 workers to walk the icy streets of Russia’s ancient capital in the
century’s first public challenge to autocratic power. He ignited a mass action
nationwide that led to the country’s first popularly elected national parliament.
After WWI miner and railway workers in the Ruhr in 1923
confronted invading French and Belgian soldiers who were sent to extract German resources.
They refused to cooperate until Great Britain and United States insisted on troop
withdrawal.
In 1930-31 Mohandes Ghandi led mass civil disobedience
against the British in India. He called for his followers to stop paying the salt tax and
to cease buying clothing and other items monopolized by the British.
Danish citizens during the German occupation in WWII
refused to aid the Nazi war effort and brought their cities to a standstill in the summer
of 1944, forcing the Germans to end curfews and blockades.
Salvadoran students, doctors, and merchants fed up with the
fear and brutality visited on their country by a longtime military dictator organized a
civic strike in 1944. Without picking up a single gun, they detached the general from his
closest supporters, including members of the military, and force him into exile.
Less than ten years after the British left India, a Baptist
preacher and theologian from Georgia, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., implementing
Ghandi’s nonviolent tactics for social change and incarnating the Gospel in the midst
of the "signs of the times", led his fellow African Americans on a fifteen-year
campaign of marches and boycotts to overthrow racial segregation in the American South.
In the early 1980’s Polish dissidents began to
organize the Solidarity movement aimed at defying communist rule in Soviet controlled
Poland. Later workers struck and won the right to organize legally, giving rise to
Solidarity as a legal entity. This eventually led to the end of communism in Poland.
In the 1980’s a group of Argentine mothers, outraged
by their government’s silence about the disappearance of their sons, started marching
in the central plaza of Buenos Aires. They did not stop until the country’s military
junta was undermined, leading to its downfall after the debacle of the Falklands War.
In 1986 Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos had his chief
rival Begnino Aquino assassinated upon his arrival in Manila. After trying to steal the
election in 1986 Marcos was challenge by Aquino’s widow, Corazon Aquino. Supporting a
rebellion by reform-minded military officers, the deprived the dictator of any chance to
hold power by force, and he fled the country in the face of large-scale civilian
nonviolent protest.
In the 1990’s a Burmese mother, Aung San Suu Kyi, led
her country’s democracy movement while under house arrest, as young Burmese were
bolstered in their struggle by a new worldwide network of nonviolent activists.
In 1996 and 1997, tens of thousands Serbian citizens
marched through the streets of Belgrade to protest the refusal of President Slobadan
Milosevic to honor the results of local elections, until he finally capitulated—and
in 1999 they returned to the streets to demand his removal.