people power the world over

people power

what an awkward phrase!

why not people’s power?

people power though is

what we have.

Gandhi leading the salt march

the power of the people
comes in different
shapes and smells
some are perfumed
others are sweaty
some are veiled
others are turbaned
some are bare-headed
others are masked
some are armed
most are not
save for their ardor
and resolve.

Rebel soldier fighting against the Caetano Salazar dictatorship during the 1975 Carnation Revolution in Portugal

Soldiers, priests, and ordinary people unite against the Shah during the 1979 Iranian revolution

Egyptian women calling for the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in Tahrir square, Cairo, February 2011

people power
the power of the people
from Lisboa to Beograd and Kyiv
Tunis to Cairo
Manila to Tbilisi
Seoul to Taipei
Tehran to Santiago de Chile
can only oust leaders
t’is impossible to unite millions
on more than that
the outstanding exception
Martin Luther King’s quest
for equal rights and emancipation.

Protests in Bangkok against government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra

Farewell sign for Tunisian prime minister Ben Ali, January 2011

The universal way to win over battle-hardened soldiers

Martin Luther King delivering his “I have a dream” speech during the 1963 march on Washington, DC

Note:  all photos were taken from the public domain.

Self-immolation and prosecution: Israel and Russia

As I have noted earlier, death is an ordinary occurrence.  For instance, two days of fighting in Syria since Friday left more than 470 people.

Death through self-immolation, however, is extra-ordinary.  

On 11 June 1963, Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, burned himself to death on a busy Saigon street to protest

Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation

the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government of President Ngo Dinh Diem.    Duc’s courageous act triggered international pressure on Diem to reform.  However, Diem simply temporized and continued to terrorize the monks.  Several monks followed Duc’s example, also immolating themselves. Eventually, a military coup toppled Diệm, who was assassinated on 2 November 1963.

The most famous self-immolation in 2010 was that of Mohamed Bouazizi, the despondent vegetable vendor, whose death led to the ouster of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.  Tunisian protests inspired similar actions throughout the Arab world–a phenomenon known as the Arab Spring. 

Mohamed Buoazizi

The Arab Spring overshadowed protests which begun in July 2011 in Tel-Aviv, Israel collectively known as the ‘social justice’ protest movements.  Soon, the protests spread to Jerusalem and other major Israeli cities.  The political actions involved hundreds of thousands of protesters from diverse religious and socioeconomic backgrounds opposing the continuous rise in the cost of living (especially housing) and worsening public services (health and education). 

The Israel protest movements were soon weakened by a split.   As a result, two separate social justice demonstrations were held in Tel-Aviv on July 14, 2012, to commemorate the first anniversary of the movement.

Moshe Silman in Haifa

Yesterday, Israel was rocked by news that J14 activist, Moshe Silman from Haifa, finally succumbed to his second- and third degree burns after setting himself on fire last week.  Silman was once  a small business owner who got suffocated by a grinding debt, to the point of homelessness.  Apparently, Silman burned himself to mark the anniversary of the protest movements. 

According a Sunday afternoon report of PressTV, Iran’s television network, another Israeli man has set himself on fire in the city of Yehud, two days after Silman died of burns.  The 45-year-old disabled man self-immolated at a bus stop in Yehud, about 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of Tel Aviv.  The identity and circumstances of the man are unknown as of this writing.

It may be too early to predict how these two self-sacrifices will affect the Israeli protest movements.  However, it may be safe to say that the movements cannot be unaffected by the developments.  Already, many Israelis are carrying posters which read “We are all Moshe Silman”,  a copy of a familiar meme from the Tahrir Revolution last year.  

In Moscow, meanwhile, three young women belonging to the all-women punk-rock group naughtily named Pussy Riot, had been ordered to stay jailed for six more months.

Pussy Riot in an outdoor performance

 

 

 

The three–Yekaterina Samutsevich, Nnadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Maria Alekhina–together with an unidentified Pussy Riot member performed in Pussy Riot’s signature miniskirts and balaclavas a raucous song against Russian President Vladimir Putin on the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow’s most important church, last February 2012.  The three were arrested after the performance and had been held in custody since then.  If sentenced, they could sent to prison for seven years.

 

 

 

Samutsevich, Tolokonnikova, Alekhina

The criminal prosecution of the three women rests on the notion that their performance incited religious hatred.  Witnesses were presented in court and said they have suffered moral damage as a result.  A cathedral security guard claimed he had trouble sleeping after the Pussy Riot performance.  Lawyers for the witnesses also claimed that the Pussy Riot performance unleashed a wave of extremism.

Pussy Riot three behind bars

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s The Guardian report that supporters of the three believe that the Russian Orthodox Church, which is close to Putin, is behind the campaign to keep them in jail.  Another prominent dissident warned of some kind of ‘Orthodox Taliban’.

 

 

 

 

So, is it a case of religious desecration or an assertion of the freedom of political expression?

 

 

The answer is crystal clear.

 

 

The monk Duc, the vendor Bouazizi, the impoverished businessman Silman, and the Pussy Riot three–all wanted to communicate what was in their hearts and minds.  

 

They may have done so in dissimilar ways.   We may not approve of self-immolation and raucous performances on church altars.

Still, we must salute their courage and pray for the departed.

Viva Egypt! Viva Bouazizi! Viva the Egyptian 300+!

Jubilant Egyptians celebrating Mubarak's resignation (Getty Images)

Viva Egypt!

After 18 days of non-stop, non-violent protests, marches, and general strikes, former air force general and supreme leader of Egypt for the last 30 years, Hosni Mubarak, skedaddles to a Sinai peninsula resort town while his designated VP Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak has resigned as Egypt’s president.

The chairman of the Grand Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces also went on TV announcing that the military was in control and that it will oversee the transition process.  While he paid tribute and praised Mubarak for his services to the nation in times of war and peace, he gave a snappy military salute to the more than 300 Egyptians who died in the last 18 days.

Egyptians in Meydan Tharir predictably exploded in a paroxysm of jubilation.  As of this writing, the celebration continues in Egypt and in other parts of the world such as London where there would be a sizable number of Egyptians.  Arabs in Jordan and the Gaza strip also join the festivities.

While PM David Cameron of the United Kingdom was quite cautious in his congratulatory message, German PM Angela Merkel was more sanguine calling the Egyptian phenom a great triumph.

For his part, US President Barack Obama praised the Egyptian people but stressed that the Egyptian military, who is in de facto control of the country, has a key and important role in ensuring the ‘orderly’ transition to democracy.

What is paramount in Obama’s mind is that exit of Mubarak should not upset the quadrilateral US-Egypt-Israel-Jordan partnership that has kept the peace in the Middle East (aka known as the absence of an international war pitting Israel against Arab states).

The last Arab-Israeli conflict, known as the Yom Kippur War, was fought in October 1973.  Even if Israel won the war, it remained worried about its security as it was surrounded by hostile Arab states.

The US stepped in and convinced Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat and Israeli PM Menachem Began to start talking peace through the Camp David process.  In March 1979, a peace treaty was signed between the two states and this meant that for the first time, an Arab state recognized the right of the Israeli state to exist.

In 1994, a similar treaty was signed between Israel and Jordan.

In my opinion, none of these considerations animated the millions of Egyptians mobilized in the last 18 days.  What united them is a burning desire to get rid of Hosni Mubarak and frustrate the plan to install son Gamal as his successor.

And they succeeded.

There may be others who are not satisfied since the Egyptian military, a key prop of the Mubarak dictatorship, is still in control.

This fact should not blind us to the more important fact that an important victory has been achieved.

The victory of the Egyptian people will serve as the base, the launching pad of the future struggles for full democracy in Egypt.

In conclusion, I call on my readers to pay tribute and pray for Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor who started the Arab prairie fire for freedom from dictators.

Let’s us also pray and pay tribute to the more than 300 still-unnamed martyrs of the Egyptian revolution.

Let’s also praise the Egyptian military and urge them to continue listening to the aspirations of the Egyptian people.

VIVA!

Mubarak is to Obama (as Marcos was to Reagan)

Willie Colozo, another good friend on Facebook asked out loud if anybody had a sense that embattled Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak will “cut and cut cleanly.”

embattled Hosni Mubarak

He was obviously alluding to the telephone exchange between a similarly embattled (by people power) Ferdinand Marcos in February 1986 with US Senator Paul Laxalt (Republican-Nevada).  The latter was designated by then US President Ronald Reagan to communicate US intentions and preferences to Marcos.

After so much hemming and hawing, Marcos asked Laxalt what he was to do.  And Laxalt advised: “You have to cut, and cut cleanly.” Laxalt’s words was reportedly followed by eloquent silence.  Then Marcos reportedly said: “I am so very disappointed.”

the ailing Ferdinand Marcos

After a day, US helicopters whisked Marcos, his family and close aides to the US-controlled Clark Air Base in central Luzon, and thence to Hickam Air Base in Hawaii.

Do we see this happening with Mubarak in the next few days?

US Senator Paul Laxalt

Egypt is currently gripped by massive popular protests since the January 25 ‘day of rage’ against poverty and human rights violations.  The clear target of the protesters is the 30-year-old Mubarak government.  Hosni was reportedly poised to name his son, Gamal, as his successor.  That prospect was obviously not acceptable to the opposition.

Notwithstanding a strong response to the street protests through the deployment of security police and special military detachments, the protests escalated and spread from Cairo to other Egyptian cities as Alexandra, Suez, and Ismaila.

The last protests of this volume happened in Egypt was the bread protests in 1977.

At the time, then Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat used his immense popularity with the Egyptian people to try to push through vast economic reforms that ended the socialistic controls of the previous government of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat introduced greater political freedom and a new economic policy, the most important aspect of which was the infitah or “open door”. This relaxed government controls over the economy and encouraged private investment. While the reforms created a wealthy and successful upper class and a small middle class, these reforms had little effect upon the average Egyptian who began to grow dissatisfied with Sadat’s rule.

In 1977, Infitah policies led to massive spontaneous riots involving hundreds of thousands of Egyptians when the state announced that it was retiring subsidies on basic foodstuffs.

Egyptians have been living under emergency law since 1967, except for an 18-month break in 1980. Emergency laws have been continuously extended every three years since 1981. These laws sharply circumscribe any non-governmental political activity: street demonstrations, non-approved political organizations, and un-registered financial donations are formally banned. Nonetheless, since 2000, these restrictions have been violated in practice.

In 2003, the agenda shifted heavily towards local democratic reforms, opposition to the succession of Gamal Mubarak as president, and rejection of violence by state security forces. Groups involved included the Egyptian Movement for Change (Kefaya), and the Association for Egyptian Mothers.

A day before Lugar spoke to Marcos over the phone, President Reagan publicly warned the latter not to use armed force against the people peacefully massed around the military camps sheltering the soldiers rebelling against his continued hold to power.

US President Barack Obama

Just a few hours ago, President Barack Obama called on Mubarak to refrain from using the military from quelling peaceful protest on Egyptian streets and intoned that the Egyptian people have an inherent human right to peaceful expression and assembly.

Interviewed by Al Jazeera, US Senator John Kerry (Democrat-Massachussetts) was chided by the program host: that US was not ‘walking its democratic talk.’

US Senator John Kerry

On his part, Mubarak addressed Egyptians on state television and condemned the street protests, dismissed his entire government (except himself of course), promised reforms (for the nth time), and will supposedly assemble a new government tomorrow.

The protesting Egyptians were unimpressed both by Obama and Mubarak.  They took to the streets again immediately after an earlier respite; they needed to listen to both broadcasts.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian security forces are deployed onto the streets and much depends on how they will behave.  If given the order to disperse or fire upon the crowds, will they do so?  Or will they join the protesters and force Mubarak and his narrow entourage to step down and leave the country?

Something has got to give, and soon!

I believe things will come to a head in  a day or so as the protesters promised to ratchet up the opposition all over Egypt. And the rest of world continues to monitor with great interest and anticipation this cliff-hanger of an awesome and historic phenom, thanks largely to Al Jazeera.

Tunisia was indeed the spark in the extremely dry Arabian prairie!