Nonviolent Victories
The following historical illustrations of the power of creative nonviolence were compiled by the Rev. Amy Morrison Heinrich, Sr. Dori Gapczynski, Carolyn Diem and Tobi Hanna-Davies, for dramatic reading at an Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice commemoration of Hiroshima Day.
Introduction
We live in a world addicted to violence and military might. As people of faith and conscience, we hunger for an alternative strategy for resolving conflicts and redressing injustices. The choice is not simply fight or flight. There is a third way -- active nonviolent resistance in the face of violence and oppression. There are many illustrations throughout history of people who have refused to submit to repression or injustice by using creative nonviolent tactics. Let us gain strength from their example so that we might follow in their footsteps, and create a less violent, more humane and just world for our children.
In 1681, King Charles II of England signed a charter giving the territory now known as Pennsylvania to William Penn. Penn was a devout person and desired to found a colony based on Christian teachings, "to see what love could do." Under Penn's leadership, Pennsylvania was opened up to the dispossessed of Europe. The Quakers came and began negotiating with the Native Americans. Penn set up a council of three colonists and three Native Americans to peacefully settle disputes.
Pennsylvania was the only territory not to have a standing militia. People said Penn was crazy. But he insisted that "the bonds of justice are stronger than the bonds of weapons." And Penn was right -- for over 50 years, as long as Penn's peaceful system of dispute resolution was followed, there were no wars with the Native Americans.
On Feb. 28, 1943, two dozen women gathered at what had been a Jewish Community Center on Rose Street in Berlin. The women were Gentiles who were married to Jewish men. Their husbands, along with hundreds of other Jews, were being held at the Rose Street Center to await transfer to Auschwitz concentration camp. The crowd, that February 28, slowly grew until about 1,000 people were in the street. "Give us back our men," the women shouted. The women refused orders to leave.
On March 4, SS troops set up machine guns, aimed them at the women, and ordered the street cleared. The women stood their ground. Six days after the protest began, without explanation, Joseph Goebbels ordered the release of the 1,500 prisoners inside the center on Rose Street. Twenty-five prisoners already en route to Auschwitz were returned.
1Early in World War II, Hitler took over the country of Norway and put the head of the Norwegian Nazi Party in power -- a man named Quisling. Quisling said that he would make Norway into a Nazi state like Germany, where the schools taught all the children the Nazi doctrine that one racial group of people is superior to all the others. But the Norwegian teachers refused to cooperate. Through the underground resistance, the teachers circulated a statement of refusal. Between 9,000 and 10,000 of Norway's teachers signed the refusal.
Quisling was furious. He arrested two hundred of the teachers and took them up north to live in extremely cold temperatures with very little food. They still would not give in. They were willing to die if necessary.
Quisling had to admit defeat. He cried, "You teachers have ruined everything for me! You ruined my Nazi state!" He knew if he executed the teachers he would create even more resistance, so he let them go. Norway was still occupied, but it could not be turned into a Nazi state.2
In 1965, in Birmingham, Alabama, when hundreds of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement were in jail, their children came to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and said to him, "Our parents are in jail, but we can march in their place."
Dr. King initially was resistant to the idea, knowing what a risk there was involved. He was uneasy about having innocent children fighting such an adult battle, a battle that all too often resulted in violence. But the children insisted.
They began marching and were met by Bull Conner, the head of the white police force, and his entire guard -- armed with power hoses and dogs and billy clubs. The children were turned back a number of times, but they didn't give up.
One day they marched up to the wall of armed police, kneeled down in front of them and prayed out loud for the police officers. The police officers' hardened hearts were softened enough that they let the children through. Dr. King saw a police officer wipe a tear from his eye. Dr. King wrote that this was the first time he had witnessed the incredible power of revolutionary love and nonviolence.
In 1976, the military seized power in Argentina. Anyone who opposed the new military government -- anyone who even criticized the new government -- was in danger of being "disappeared." Their families never heard from them again. Out of desperation, 14 women came together to protest the disappearances of their husbands, sons and daughters. They had already pleaded with the government to tell them where their loved ones were, but they had received no response.
The 14 women planned a religious march in front of the presidential palace, in the Plaza de Mayo. When they got there, the police came and forbade their protest. The women answered that they were only having a religious service to inquire about their loved ones. The police threatened them with jail, thinking the women would leave, but they would not leave.
Every Thursday they returned and marched in front of the presidential palace. Some of them were jailed overnight and some of them lost their jobs because of the protest, but they kept on. Their numbers grew from 14 to 2,000 women. They became known as "the conscience of the people."
Reporters from around the world began reporting how repressive the military government was. Eventually, after the women had protested every week from 1977 to 1983, Argentina's government became more democratic. There were many reasons, but one was the courage of the women who dared to be the conscience of their nation.3
After World War I, Germany turned from being an authoritarian state to a more democratic government. But some of the people still believed that democracy is for weak nations. They wanted to return to having a strong authoritarian leader.
One of those who opposed democracy was General Kapp. He marched his army in, thinking that all the people would support him. The president of Germany, President Ebart, had an army with which he could have fought back, but instead, he went on the radio and used the newspapers to tell the people not to fight the invaders with violence, but to instead refuse to cooperate. He asked for all the factories, the government -- all the institutions to shut down. And they did. People stopped working.
General Kapp had some people killed and threatened everyone else, but still the people would not work for him. After only a few days, General Kapp and his soldiers gave up and left Germany.3
In 1968, the people of Czechoslovakia revolted against the Communist dictatorship that had seized power after World War II. This move toward democracy was intolerable to the other Communist Block nations. They sent the Warsaw Pact armies to invade. But the people of Czechoslovakia were ready for the invasion.
They took down street signs so the invading soldiers could not find their way. They rerouted the troop trains. They talked to the soldiers, saying, "What are you doing here? We're not fighting you." The troops became so demoralized that the military leaders had to remove them and replace them with troops who did not speak the language. Some Czechoslovakians were executed, but the troops still could not control the country.
Finally, after nine months, the Czech leaders agreed to what they thought was the best possible deal under the circumstances. Unfortunately, when the invaders were given an inch, they took complete control again. But that does not negate the fact that, by using nonviolent resistance, the people of Czechoslovakia held out for nine months against one of the world's largest armies -- something the Czech army could never have done.2
In the year 26, when Jerusalem and the rest of Judea were occupied by the Romans, Pontius Pilate attempted to violate Jewish law. He brought the imperial standards, with their images of Caesar, into Jerusalem and displayed them at the fortress overlooking the temple.
The city was thrown into a tumult. Not only did the standards break the commandment against images, but these images were the particular gods of the legions.
A multitude gathered. For five days and nights, Jewish leaders interceded with Pilate to remove the standards, but he refused.
On the sixth day, Pilate assembled the multitude as if he were going to answer their petition. Instead, he gave a signal to his soldiers and they surrounded the people in a ring three deep. Pilate threatened that their punishment would be immediate death unless they submitted to the images of Caesar, and he signaled his soldiers to draw their swords. But the Jews threw themselves on the ground, uncovered their necks, and said they would die willingly rather than have the wisdom of their laws transgressed.
Overcome with astonishment, Pilate immediately commanded the removal of the standards from Jerusalem.4
In the Philippines in 1986, dictator Fernando Marcos pretended to hold democratic elections to choose the next president. He arranged for elections to be held, but he also hired people to count the vote in his favor and to program the computers not to register votes for his opponent, Cory Aquino, the wife of the imprisoned and then murdered Filipino leader, Ninoy Aquino, who had converted to nonviolence in prison.
The people of the Philippines were ready for Marcos' sham elections. For a year and-a-half, church leaders had been taking training in nonviolent action and arranging for nonviolence training to be given all over the country. Half a million people had become poll watchers who were prepared to die if necessary to prevent the falsification of ballots.
As word got out about how Marcos was cheating in the elections, two top military leaders defected from Marcos' army. Marcos sent his troops to kill them, but Cardinal Sin, the head of the Catholic Church in the Philippines, went on the radio and called on the people to place their unarmed bodies between the defectors and the government troops. Only a few people responded in the beginning, but soon hundreds of thousands of people made a human wall around the defectors. They tied yellow ribbons on the gun barrels of the tanks and offered the soldiers gifts of food, candies and flowers.
Marcos ordered the tanks to attack, but where nuns and priests sat in front of them, the tank commanders refused to proceed. Marcos ordered the air force to bomb, but the pilots refused and defected also. Marcos had to leave the Philippines, and Cory Aquino was elected president.4
In South Africa, the bitter struggle to end apartheid included a remarkably long list of effective nonviolent actions: labor strikes, slow-downs, sit-downs, stoppages, and stay-aways; bus boycotts, consumer boycotts, and school boycotts; funeral demonstrations; non-cooperation with government appointed functionaries; non-payment of rent; violation of government bans on peaceful meetings; defiance of segregation orders on beaches and in restaurants, theaters and hotels; and the shunning of black police and soldiers.
Despite the fact that violent tactics were also used, this amounts to what is probably the largest grassroots eruption of diverse nonviolent strategies in a single struggle in human history! One small, beautiful example of such creativity:
A group of South African women in a squatters' village suddenly found themselves set upon by soldiers and bulldozers. They were told they had two minutes to clear out -- from the only homes they had. Knowing how puritanical rural white Dutch Reformed Afrikaners can be, the women stood in front of the bulldozers and began stripping off all their clothes. The embarrassed police turned tail and ran, and the community retained possession.4,5
When Mahatma Gandhi roused millions in civil disobedience to British rule, a much less well-known figure in the remote northwest corner of India raised history's first nonviolent "army": 100,000 men from a Muslim people known for their fierce fighting, the Pathans of the Khyber Pass.
The Pathans lived by a code of honor and revenge. If a Pathan could not avenge an enemy's insult with his blood, what kind of man was he? How could he face his clan or his wife? To die seeking revenge was more honorable. Yet from this nation of warriors a leader emerged, Badshah Khan, who had directly experienced the military power and arrogance of the British on the one hand, and the spiritual truth-force and nonviolent resistance of Gandhi on the other.
Badshah Khan appealed to his people's honor, to their capacity to love, to their patience, and to their capacity to endure pain. He inspired 100,000 of his people to form an "army" that took a vow of nonviolence. Together, Gandhi and Badshah Khan, by means of their spiritual leadership, ended the British rule of what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Badshah Khan's words: "There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pathan like me subscribing to the creed of nonviolence. It is not a new creed. It was followed 1400 years ago by the Holy Prophet Mohammed, and it has been followed by many who want to throw off the oppressor's yoke." In 1985 Badshah Khan was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, for offering a weapon of hope for conflicts around the globe.6
Notes
Detroit Free Press, Feb. 26, 1993, p. 1A The works of Gene Sharp, Harvard University McManis, Philip and Gerald Schlabach, Relentless Persistence: Nonviolent Action in Latin America. New Society Publishers, 1990 Wink, Walter, Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa: Jesus' Third Way, New Society Pub., 1987 Wink, Walter, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Fortress Press, 1992 Easwaran, Eknath, Badshah Khan, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam, Nilgiri Press, 1984Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice
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The indigenous resistance in Southern Mexico began with Mexico's signing of NAFTA in 1994. Some of the indigenous resistors, like the Catholic Abejas, practice nonviolence as a lifestyle, forswearing all forms of violence. The Zapatistas, though not necessarily pacifists, have nevertheless employed largely nonviolent tactics since the cease fire in 1994.
Kay and Randy Bond of Michigan Peace Team were working in Chiapas with Cloudforest Initiatives in 1999 when their host, Tomas, approached them in the workshop, asking if they had heard about what happened in San Andreas. They answered that they had not. Tomas went on to explain that the State police had taken control of city hall and kicked out the officials, installing their own officials instead.
This was a serious blow to the resistance movement. San Andreas, the site of the as yet unimplemented peace accords with the government, was a Zapatista stronghold. Its seizure could not be tolerated; other Zapatista strongholds would be sure to follow. If any government offensive were to lead to violent resistance, Kay and Randy reasoned, this would certainly be it.
The next day Tomas approached them again and asked if they had heard about what happened in San Andreas. They answered that they had not. Tomas went on to explain that the Zapatistas had organized 3,000 civilians -- men, women, and children -- from surrounding communities and marched into town six abreast. The authorities panicked and fled. San Andreas was reclaimed without a drop of blood being spilt.
After years of bloody conflict and authoritarian rule, Yugoslavia was suffering under the dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Aggravating Yugoslavia's condition was an extensive bombing campaign by NATO, destroying Serbia's infrastructure, poisioning the environment, and crippling the democratic opposition as national sentiment lined up behind Milosevic. In spite of these odds, however, a nonviolent revolution shook the country before the year was out.
Rejecting the official count of a tainted election, Constitutional scholar Vojislav Kostunica declared himself President-elect but insisted on a peaceful transition, calling for "a nonviolent, wise, civilized, democratic revolution." He called for national civil disobedience, including strikes and peaceful demonstrations.
Two days later, miners at the Kolubara coal mine began a strike, threatening a nationwide blackout. Military efforts to end the strike failed. The 7,000 miners called for help on radios and cell phones and were joined by 20,000 civilians. Three old men drove their tractor through a police barricade and the police capitulated.
Emboldened by the miners' victory, hundreds of thousands of Serbs marched into Belgrade to demand the resignation of Milosevic. Riot officers with tear gas failed to stop the crowds, who took over both Parliament and the media. Shortly thereafer Milosevic capitulated. (Source: "The End of Milosevic," Time, October 16, 2000.)