Moscow, Russia, August 1991. A statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police, is toppled by protesters after the collapse of a hardline coup that lasted just three days.
There is every reason to think that the coup will succeed … The indignation of the people on the streets counts for nothing. (Edward Pearce, columnist, Guardian, 21 August 1991)
Scepticism is in many respects both admirable and desirable. We should question our own actions and attitudes. We should question the motives and actions of others. Sometimes, however, self-described ‘realists’ are too eager to underestimate the change that can be achieved, and to dismiss those who take risks for change.
The analysis of the Soviet hardline coup quoted above, with the writer’s scornful judgement that defiance on the streets of Moscow ‘counts for nothing’, was demonstrably wrong. The collapse of the coup in response to popular protest, on the very day that those words were published, made that clear. In reality, as I had noted in an article written six months earlier, growing popular anger meant that ‘the Kremlin cannot put the lid back on’. As a Russian commentator wrote at that time, ‘Hundreds and thousands of bottles have been opened in the last six years, and their genies couldn’t be enticed back inside or sealed up any more.’
Scepticism was, however, widespread among those who believed the popular mood to be irrelevant. Politicians are often keen for ‘stability’ not to be upset. But ‘stability’ in an authoritarian context is often anything but. Rights bring stability, repression doesn’t.
Moscow, Russia, August 1991. A statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police, is toppled by protesters after the collapse of a hardline coup that lasted just three days.
In 1976, a military junta seized power in Argentina. During what would come to be known as the ‘Dirty War’ – officially, the Process of National Reorganization – tens of thousands became ‘the disappeared’, a newly coined, lethal noun. Many abductees were dropped from planes into the ocean. Relatives were told that the whereabouts of their loved ones was ‘unknown’.
On 30 April 1977, fourteen women came together in the Plaza de Mayo, near the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, demanding change. They wanted information about their children, kidnapped by security forces off the streets or from their homes.
At first, the women were ignored. But they and others like them helped change the country. Every Thursday at 3.30 p.m. the women came together – more and more of them as the months went by. The police told them to ‘circulate’, or move on. So they did – in slow circles around the square. They were dismissed as las locas, ‘the crazy women’. As one of their number, Aida de Suarez, later noted, ‘We went to the streets to confront them directly. We were mad. But it was the only way to stay sane.’
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo were tortured. Some, like Azucena Villaflor, were abducted and killed. But still the Mothers continued their work. De Suarez said, ‘They thought that by kidnapping Azucena, by kidnapping the fourteen Mothers, they would destroy our movement. They didn’t realize this would only strengthen our determination.’ Hundreds took part in the protests each week. Each woman wore a white headscarf, often bearing the name of a loved one. As the Mothers gained global recognition, the junta decided that they were no longer just crazies. They were paid the compliment of being judged ‘as subversive as their children’.
In 1983, the junta finally gave way to pressures for civilian rule, but the Mothers and the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo continued to campaign for justice. In 2005, Azucena Villaflor’s ashes were buried with honour in the Plaza. In 2011, Alfredo Astiz, one of the most feared agents of the junta, who was directly responsible for the abduction of Villaflor and others, was jailed for life. Junta leaders were also jailed. Finally, justice had been achieved.
From 1977, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo repeatedly defied the military junta in Argentina by publicly demanding the truth about their children, who had been ‘disappeared’.
Estela de Carlotto, one of the Grandmothers of the Plaza, had been searching for her unknown grandson since he had been born in captivity to her daughter Laura and taken from her before she was killed. De Carlotto insisted she would find him one day. It seemed impossible. In 2014, de Carlotto found her grandson Ignacio. She had waited for that moment for thirty-six years.
CHAIN REACTIONS
In 1989, peaceful protests ended one-party regimes throughout Eastern Europe. In the Soviet Union, much less had changed. Lies were still told about injustices that stretched back half a century.
Under the secret terms of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Hitler and Stalin had agreed to divide up much of the region. Hitler took most of Poland, and gave the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – to Moscow. After 1945, when Hitler’s armies were driven out of Russia, the annexation was never reversed. During the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of Balts were deported to Siberia and elsewhere.
But Balts never fully accepted the loss of independence. By 1988, people were making their voices heard. Massed choirs at an Estonian song festival helped bring change, in what became known as the country’s ‘Singing Revolution’. The authorities had to ask themselves, how do you arrest an entire stadium for singing forbidden songs?
In 1989, Balts were determined that the truth about history – how Stalin had destroyed their sovereignty, and deported and murdered so many – should finally be heard. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet pact, two million people – a third of the population – took part in a 400-mile human chain across the three Baltic republics. The Kremlin threatened dire consequences, declaring, ‘People should know the abyss into which they are being pushed.’
The Balts refused to back down. Instead, they publicly reasserted their long-lost sovereignty. When I asked about the possibility of tanks coming in, one Estonian leader told me – rightly, as would later become clear – that any crackdown would only be the dragon’s dying gasp.
In January 1991, Russia launched its long-threatened crackdown. Soviet troops killed protesters defending the parliament in Lithuania. In neighbouring Latvia, crowds risked their lives as they partied, while waiting for more Kremlin violence. Outside the cathedral in Riga, I talked to Privite and her forester husband as they cheerfully waltzed round to the sound of a brass band. In a corner of the cathedral, doctors and nurses sat in an improvised operating theatre, waiting for the casualties. Privite explained, ‘My children are all grown up. And I’m not afraid for myself. Why should I be?’ Lia, a sixty-seven-year-old cleaner, agreed: ‘All my family were in Siberia. Things will be bad now – but I think we will be independent. Even if I die, I want my children to see it.’
Seven months later, the defeat of a hardline coup triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. The Balts regained their independence and the truth about history could be freely told. The actions of Privite, Lia and millions of participants in a vast human chain all played their part.
Estonia, 23 August 1989. Two million people took part in a 400-mile human chain. They demanded truth and the restoration of sovereignty.
‘Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable.’
US SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON, 25 JANUARY 2011
‘I really consider President and Mrs Mubarak to be friends of my family,’ Hillary Clinton told an interviewer in 2009. When pressed on human rights abuses in Egypt, she seemed reluctant to speak uncomfortable truths. ‘We all have room for improvement,’ was all that the US Secretary of State was ready to concede. Millions of Egyptians felt that Clinton’s response – in effect, ‘Nobody’s perfect!’ – did not begin to reflect the reality of Mubarak’s long, corrupt and brutal rule.
The murder a year later of twenty-eight-year-old Khaled Said, dragged out of a Cairo internet café by security forces and battered to death in the street, became a focus of huge popular anger. Images from the morgue of his smashed face went viral. A Facebook group, We Are All Khaled Said, created anonymously by Google marketing executive Wael Ghonim, gained hundreds of thousands of members, and energized the protests that began seven months later, on 25 January 2011, in Cairo and across Egypt.
Despite the violence unleashed by the authorities in the days that followed, in which more than 800 people died and thousands were injured, the protesters on Tahrir Square and elsewhere remained overwhelmingly peaceful. Ramy Essam, an engineering student, composed the song ‘Leave!’, whose message became the anthem of the Square:
Leave, leave, leave!
He will leave, because we won’t leave!
Egyptian humour repeatedly riffed on the ‘Leave!’ theme. One man carried a placard linking his own domestic situation to the urgent need for Mubarak to go: ‘Please leave. I got married recently. I miss my wife.’ An unkempt demonstrator insisted, ‘Please leave. I need a haircut.’ A third held a placard patiently over his head. His slogan summed up his dilemma: ‘Please leave. My arm hurts.’
On 10 February, President Mubarak announced he would not yet leave, but would ‘continue to shoulder’ his responsibilities. The crowds became angrier still. Finally, just after 6 p.m. on 11 February 2011 – after eighteen days of growing protests – the vice-president announced that Mubarak was indeed leaving. Tahrir Square erupted in celebration. A popular anthem, ‘The Sound of Freedom’, declared:
We broke all boundaries.
Our weapon was our dreams.
RAP AGAINST INHUMANITY
In Tunisia and across the Middle East, music played a key role in the uprisings of 2011. ‘Rais Lebled’, by Tunisian rapper El General (‘Mr President, your people are dead / People eat from the garbage / Look what’s happening in your country’) became a hit with Tunisian and Egyptian protesters alike.
When Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, president for twenty-three years, fled to Saudi Arabia in January 2011, his departure and the democratic elections that followed seemed to pave the way for a new era. But even as Tunisia tried to rebuild, it has been plagued by new violence. In two separate attacks in 2015, twenty-two people were killed in the National Bardo Museum in Tunis, and thirty-eight died in an attack in the beach resort of Sousse. So-called Islamic State – ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, call the murderous group whatever name you like – claimed responsibility for both atrocities.
Rap music, which played an important role in confronting corrupt governments in past years, now challenges the brutality of Islamic State and Al Qaeda, too. Mehdi Akkari, ‘DJ Costa’, has used his music to speak out against Daesh not least after his own brother travelled to join the terror group in Syria. One of his songs is ‘Brainwashing’:
They prey on your heart and your sentiments
They say come support the brothers who are being tortured
Every time death is near you, you’re a step closer to paradise.
But, sings DJ Costa, ‘Think about it, why are they coming after you?’
DJ Costa has repeatedly been threatened, and survived an apparent assassination attempt. He insists he will not stop. ‘Terrorism is my enemy. And a rapper who doesn’t defend his people is not a rapper.’
Across the region, people take remarkable risks to defy ISIS. The citizen journalists of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently document the stark reality of life inside the declared capital of Daesh in eastern Syria – a town that used to be, as one of the Raqqa group points out, ‘a normal city, like any city in the world’. The members of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently work in extraordinarily dangerous circumstances, but continue regardless.
In Beirut, meanwhile, the Great Departed band sing darkly satirical songs that mock and confront Daesh, with lines like, ‘And because Islam is merciful, we shall butcher and hand out meat. And because we need to reduce traffic, we will blow up human beings.’
The risks for all of the above are obvious. A member of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently argues, ‘By the fact that we are staying alive, we are hurting ISIS.’ For them and others, it is impossible not to confront ISIS, as they look to the future and hope for a time when – not least because of the courage of the Raqqa group themselves – the fear of Islamic State will be a thing of the past, in Syria, Iraq and towns and cities around the world.
From El General, who helped end repression in Tunisia, to defiance against Islamic State today, rap music has played its role.
For twenty years, Amnesty International, Oxfam and others around the world campaigned for a global arms trade treaty that would ban the sale of arms to those who might use those weapons to commit atrocities. But governments were less than keen, not least because the global arms industry is worth $100 billion a year.
When campaigners first presented the idea, they were told it was ‘utopian’. Officials insisted, ‘You will never succeed.’ Over the years, however, millions pressed for change. Gradually, barriers were broken down – through individual and mass actions, new and old media, quiet and megaphone diplomacy. In reaching the endgame, campaigners found some surprising allies.
One day in June 2012, a vast stretch limousine with darkened glass drew up outside the factory of the Belgian machine-gun manufacturer FN Herstal. Herstal confirmed to the chauffeur that yes, this was the right place for his boss to come and buy guns. But then – out of the car stepped the boss himself.
The boss turned out to be Darth Vader. Suddenly, Herstal changed its mind: ‘Not him, no. We’re not going to sell you weapons. We’re calling the police!’
Belgium, June 2012. Darth Vader visits the factory of Belgian arms manufacturer FN Herstal – and highlights poor regulation of arms sales.
At the Dassault plant in France, where the Joker emerged from his sports car to buy weapons, it was the same story. The Joker was incredulous: ‘But you sell weapons to everybody, you don’t ask questions. Why can’t I buy weapons?’ As the Joker himself pointed out, his credentials were excellent: ‘I’m a bad guy!’
The videos of the two visits, organized and filmed by Amnesty International, highlighted an obvious truth: new rules were needed, so that it would no longer be legal to sell weapons to tyrannical regimes. Why should Darth Vader and the Joker be the only bad guys who aren’t allowed to buy arms?
The campaign stunts caused official embarrassment and increased the momentum for change. A year after those visits by the bad guys, governments adopted an Arms Trade Treaty at the United Nations. Persuading governments to comply with the treaty they have signed up for is the next important step. Maybe Darth and the Joker are still needed.
