Advertisement
Opinion | For Hong Kong protesters, the choice is clear: be violent and fail, or use peaceful pressure and succeed
- Violence may have greater impact, but its rate of success is lower, the history of civil resistance shows
- Hong Kong protesters have to choose between surrendering to anger and violence or committing to peaceable ways to pressure the government
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
After the violence against Hong Kong protesters advocating the withdrawal of the extradition bill, they face a strategic choice: violence or non-violence? Violence, such as wounding or killing people, is more forceful. However, non-violence, such as picketing or blocking traffic, is more successful.
Advertisement
A few violent movements have succeeded, like the 1917 Russian Revolution and the 1949 Chinese Revolution. However, many more non-violent movements have succeeded, such as the 1974 Portugal Carnation Revolution, the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, and the “colour” revolutions of former Soviet states.
Of 323 political movements, only 23 per cent of violent ones succeeded, whereas 53 per cent of non-violent movements were successful, according to a study of civil resistance by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. They studied political movements involving at least 1,000 people each from 1900 to 2006, and deemed a movement successful if protesters achieved their goal within a year from their peak event.
So, why do violent movements fail? Violent protests often have few members, elicit strong government actions against the protesters, and have less force to repel them. Many people believe in a movement’s goals but their morals or fears prevent violent participation. Driven by religious beliefs, such as “thou shalt not kill,” or a belief in human rights, many people are morally against violence.
Others are vulnerable, like the elderly, sick, or children, and fear imprisonment or violent retribution by the government’s police, military or paramilitary. So, violent movements often have far fewer adherents than non-violent ones, and governments can more easily dismiss them as outliers and eliminate them.
Advertisement
Advertisement