Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

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your turnout is poor, the movement’s credibility is destroyed. And at marches,
people get arrested, beaten, and shot. The authorities will try to provoke
violence. One bad march can destroy a movement. Here was a point that
had people nodding. “Any gathering in Rangoon is lunacy,” Djinovic said.
But if not marches, then what The Serbs showed the participants excerpts
from A Force More Powerful, a documentary series about nonviolent
struggles: Gandhi’s Salt March, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa,
and the lunch-counter sit-ins and bus boycotts of the American civil
rights movement. Popovic pointed out the planning involved in these actions,
and made the group list the tactics they saw: leaflets, banners, sit-ins,
boycotts, picketing, music. “South Africa and Burma have a similarity: zero
free media,” he said. “So how do you spread the message”
“Songs,” said a man with a mustache. “Prayers and funerals,” said a middle-aged
woman, the oldest in the group, a stern woman the others took to
calling Auntie. Popovic pounced. “So what’s interesting about using funerals”
“It’s the only place people can meet,” a young man said.
“Funerals are a dilemma for your opponent,” said Popovic. “In Zimbabwe,
a gathering of five people was banned, but what if I have 5,000 people
at a funeral Whenever anyone related to the movement dies, they will
gather and sing songs—and the police will not interfere! It’s a real problem
to tear-gas a funeral.”
The next idea was one the Serbs had learned from the American academic
Gene Sharp, the author of From Dictatorship to Democracy (a book
originally published in 1993 in Thailand for Burmese dissidents), who has
been called the Clausewitz of nonviolence. Popovic was first introduced to
Sharp’s ideas in the spring of 2000 by Robert Helvey, a former U.S. Army
colonel who had served as defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Burma
in the 1980s before becoming disillusioned with armed struggle. When the
Otpor members met Helvey, the movement already had 20,000 active members
and a formidable reputation. But the group had hit a wall—the movement
was growing, but its leaders couldn’t see how Otpor could turn that
growth into the fall of Milosevic.
Helvey showed them how. He explained Sharp’s idea that a regime stays
in power through the obedience of the people it governs. The goal of a democracy
movement should be to persuade people to withdraw their obedi-
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