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Not Protesting, Just Strolling

‘A hero is somebody who does what he can.’

ROMAIN ROLLAND

It is difficult to organize a public protest if you know in advance that the result will be arrest, beating or torture. But protesters over the years have found ways of demonstrating, even while appearing not to. ‘Me, a protester? You must have misunderstood!’ is the message to uniformed and plain-clothes police alike.

Admittedly, the authorities can see that they are dealing with an anti-government protest. It is, after all, difficult to imagine that demonstrative praise for an unpopular government can be anything but ironic. But how can police and security forces distinguish between those who are indeed protesting and those who – genuinely – just happen to be out and about? It can be as simple as eating a sandwich, clapping or merely standing still. Sometimes, less is more.

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Minsk, Belarus, 15 July 2010. In Belarus, even a pillow fight – in mock-commemoration of a 600-year-old battle – is treated as a threat to national security. On this day, fifty people were arrested.

FORBIDDEN APPLAUSE

Authoritarian leaders crave or demand applause. Official newspaper accounts of Stalin’s speeches were sprinkled with bracketed descriptions ranging from ‘stormy applause’ to ‘stormy, prolonged applause’ and finally culminating – through devotion or fear, or a mixture of the two – in that dictator’s ultimate feel-good moment, ‘stormy, prolonged applause that became an ovation’. In Stalin’s Russia, just as in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or in North Korea today, the failure to clap enthusiastically enough could be punished as a grave crime.

In the former Soviet republic of Belarus, that principle was turned on its head. Protesters applauded the president – and the authorities locked them up for doing so. The authorities’ logic was compelling. There are few good reasons to applaud Alexander Lukashenko, who has been described as ‘Europe’s last dictator’. Therefore, the enthusiastic applause that took place on a weekly basis for several months in 2011 must have been seeking to mock him.

In response to this outbreak of disloyal loyalty, the authorities forbade all applause. Those who continued to clap were arrested for ‘hooliganism’. (The authorities cast their net wide: one of those arrested for illegal clapping only had one arm.) Even presidential yes-men, usually first to jump up with their ‘stormy applause’, sat silent while the president spoke, in case their clapping might be perceived as arrestable irony.

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Dozens were arrested for their mock loyalty. Some of those who were arrested didn’t seem very cowed.

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Belarus, June 2011. Crowds gather to ‘applaud’ President Lukashenko.

The ban on applause was just the beginning. The authorities followed up with a ban on all gatherings, ‘for the purpose of a form of action or inaction’. For Lukashenko, it would appear that those who chose to do something and those who chose to do nothing could both seem equally subversive.

The Belarus Free Theatre, a theatre group whose directors, actors and even audiences have repeatedly been arrested for telling too many truths, has a show called Generation Jeans. (The title is a reference to the ‘Jeans Revolution’ of 2006, where denim was used as an improvised protesters’ flag.) Generation Jeans concludes, ‘Sooner or later, all jail terms end. And so does dictatorship.’

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Shanghai, China, February 2011. For the jittery authorities, just going for a stroll was reason enough to arrest people.

JASMINE AND BIG MACS

Protesting in China is challenging and dangerous. But Chinese people have found unusual ways of making their concerns heard.

In 2011, the peaceful ‘Jasmine Revolution’ in Tunisia – first in the series of uprisings that became known as the Arab Spring – showed that the voices of ordinary citizens were being heard more loudly than ever before. Tunisia’s corrupt president was obliged to flee. Chinese people who wanted more freedoms for their country were inspired by what they saw in Tunisia. They wanted to show solidarity with those on the other side of the world who had achieved extraordinary things.

An official protest in China would inevitably be broken up before it had begun. Instead, organizers encouraged a series of ‘strolls’ at different locations – outside a busy McDonald’s in Beijing, Starbucks in Guangzhou or the Peace Cinema in Shanghai. ‘No shouting or slogans, just walking and smiling,’ read a statement from a group called the Initiators of the Chinese Jasmine Revolution.

These protests-that-weren’t proved a bigger headache for the authorities than might have been expected. Large numbers of uniformed and plain-clothes police were drafted in, in response to the quiet stroll. But it was difficult to arrest somebody who might – or, alternatively, might not – merely be seeking a cappuccino or a Big Mac. Those who were demanding human rights and those who wanted to eat a hamburger mingled – sometimes deliberately so.

One man sitting in McDonald’s said, ‘It’s a chance to meet each other. It’s like preparing for the future.’ The authorities reacted with a familiar all-embracing paranoia, bringing in street-cleaning trucks to clear the area, while beating people up at random. Signalling their fear of these non-protests, the government banned the word ‘jasmine’ as an internet search term.

‘Wherever there is oppression there is resistance.’

MAO ZEDONG

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SHOPPING OR PROTESTING?

When Hong Kong reverted to China in 1997 after a century of British colonial rule, the official slogan was, ‘One country, two systems’. In the years since then, Hong Kongers have begun to fear that the line between Hong Kong’s freedom and repression on the mainland is becoming dangerously blurred.

In 2014, tens of thousands took part in what became known as the ‘umbrella protests’, demanding universal suffrage – which the authorities, in turn, were determined not to grant. The umbrellas served as a defence against the tear gas and pepper spray that were deployed against protesters, as well as against the Hong Kong rains.

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Hong Kong, October 2014. Armed only with umbrellas, tens of thousands faced riot police and tear gas to demand the right to choose their own elected representative.

Even after the dispersal of the protests, defiance continued. In November 2014, Hong Kong chief executive CY Leung – mockingly known as 689, because he was installed with that modest number of votes – called for the public to go shopping in the Mong Kok district, to give support to businesses in the area that had been hurt by the protests. The protesters took him at his word. They flooded Mong Kok, shouting ‘To shop!’, causing official confusion. How could police now make a distinction between shoppers and pretend ‘shoppers’?

Today, CY Leung is still having difficulty in finding popularity. His approval ratings are many times lower than his predecessors in the post. In 2016, Facebook made it even harder for him when it launched new ways of reacting to posts. ‘Like’ was joined by ‘love’, ‘wow’, ‘sad’, ‘haha’ and ‘angry’. CY Leung’s Facebook page set world records when a hundred thousand Hong Kongers took the opportunity to react to him as ‘angry’ within just a few days.

SUBVERSIVE SANDWICHES

After a military coup in Thailand in 2014, citizens were ordered to be ‘happy’. Those who failed to be sufficiently happy were taken off to military camps for what was described as ‘attitude adjustment’. Gatherings of more than five people were banned. But Thai people found ways of getting round the ban, by organizing activities that weren’t protests – merely activities.

One form of defiance was sandwich-eating, which became a way of saying ‘no’ to the junta in a discreet, deniable – and yet conspicuous – way, during what became known as ‘democracy picnics’. The military responded by arresting those who took the subversive step of eating lunch.

Along with the sandwiches, book-reading became another dangerous activity. Studious types were arrested for demonstratively reading books in public, including George Orwell’s 1984, which the military, perhaps with good reason, clearly believed to be relevant to Thailand’s situation.

And the paranoia didn’t stop with literature. Even the movies blurred into real life when the three-fingered salute from The Hunger Games was adopted by Thai protesters, leading to yet more arrests. This illegal enthusiasm for a movie gesture resulted in some Bangkok cinemas deciding that The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 was subversive fare. They cancelled showings ‘for fear of political implications’. They were proved right when students were arrested outside a cinema that went ahead with a showing of the film.

In the meantime, the junta has not backed down. Nor, though, have the protesters. I Love General Prayuth is the name of a Facebook page supposedly in praise of the junta leader. In 2016, eight of its organizers were arrested and charged with sedition. The idea of loving the general was clearly too improbable.

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Bangkok, Thailand, June 2014. Sandwich-eating and book-reading became arrestable activities according to the junta.

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DOC AND GRUMPY VS TANKS

In Poland in 1981, the government put tanks on the streets and declared martial law, reversing historic reforms that had been introduced in the previous year. Solidarity, the free trade union and informal opposition movement, was banned. Thousands were beaten and arrested. Solidarity supporters daubed countless graffiti on walls across Poland in the months and years that followed. The authorities, in turn, kept painting the protest slogans over, leaving a rash of white splodges in their wake. So far, so normal.

And then came the Polish twist. A group called the Orange Alternative decided to confuse the authorities. They once again painted on to the white spaces. But instead of writing more Solidarity slogans – which would yet again be instantly erased – they painted pictures of friendly dwarfs. This put the government in a quandary. On the face of it, the dwarfs – krasnoludki or ‘little red-hatted folk’ – were not obviously subversive. They were, after all, just dwarfs. And yet, the authorities could not help feeling that they were being mocked. The decision came from on high: ban dwarfs.

In advance of a pre-announced ‘Revolution of the Dwarfs’ in 1988, an illegal leaflet proclaimed, ‘The Revolution of the Dwarfs cannot happen without you! Its fate is in your hands.’ Participants were asked to wear paper hats and bring rattles and toy trumpets. Instead of the more familiar chant of, ‘There is no freedom without Solidarity!’, marchers chanted, ‘There is no freedom without dwarfs!’ For the authorities, this was complicated. Police radios communicated the instructions – a first, perhaps, in world history – ‘Arrest all dwarfs!’

In retrospect, the authorities were perhaps right to be worried. Within months of the Revolution of the Dwarfs, the authorities felt obliged to agree to elections in 1989, where Solidarity’s victory helped trigger the fall of the Berlin Wall. Grumpy, Doc, Bashful and Sneezy had played their part.

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Poland, 1984-88. Poles painted friendly dwarfs in Wrocław and across the country in response to the authorities’ crackdown on graffitied political slogans. In June 1988 they organized a Revolution of the Dwarfs, where participants proclaimed ‘There is no freedom without dwarfs.’

STILLNESS FOR CHANGE

In 2013, millions took to the streets of Istanbul and other Turkish cities, initially voicing environmental concerns about the redevelopment of Gezi Park in the centre of Istanbul, and then with broader demands for political change. The authorities beat, tear-gassed and detained them, even as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rallied against the ‘menace’ of Twitter. When Erdoğan described the protesters as çapul, or ‘riffraff’, the protesters adopted the intended insult as their own. ‘Every day I’m çapuling’ became a popular slogan on T-shirts and on walls.

On 15 June 2013, after two weeks of protests, riot police evicted thousands from Gezi Park and the adjoining Taksim Square. The square was sealed off, and the government announced that anybody attempting to remain would be treated as a ‘supporter or member of a terrorist organization’. It seemed as if everything was over.

But then, two days later, came Standing Man. The man who appeared on Taksim Square did nothing. He simply stood there for eight hours. He gazed at the national flag and at the statue of Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey.

At first, few noticed. Then, people started taking photographs and sharing them on social media. Others joined Standing Man in his slogan-less vigil. The same protest began in other districts and cities. The hashtag #duranadam – ‘standing man’ – went viral in Turkey and worldwide.

Many followed Erdem Gündüz, artist and Standing Man. Gündüz explained, ‘I am just an ordinary citizen of this country. We want our voices to be heard.’ Gündüz insisted he was not frightened by threats, ‘We will have to keep going.’

In the years since then, the crushing of dissent in Turkey has been worse than ever. But the spirit of Taksim has not died. In 2014, Mücella Yapıcı, a founding member of the Taksim Solidarity group, was among those accused of starting a ‘criminal organization’. She was later acquitted, but even as the threat of a possible jail sentence was hanging over her, Yapıcı insisted, ‘A new solidarity was born in June, and it’s not over.’ Erdoğan himself benefited from the defiance. In 2016, in response to an attempted military coup, unarmed crowds (involving many who opposed Erdoğan, but were not keen on a military overthrow) filled the streets and blocked tanks. Even after the coup, Erdoğan still failed to understand the meaning of basic rights. He went on to lock up leading journalists and activists – including those who had spoken up on his behalf and against the coup.

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Istanbul, Turkey, June 2013. Erdem Gündüz, the Standing Man, stood for hours on Taksim Square. He was joined by others, including, at one point, a mannequin.