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The chapters in this history of the IRA which deal with the gradual shift in the position of Provisional Sinn Fein and IRA, their engagement in the political process through discussions with both the rival nationalist SDLP and the British government, and their eventual decision to end the military campaign, provide valuable insights into the dynamics of the peace process in Northern Ireland. The final chapter subjects the republican case to critical – though not unsympathetic – scrutiny but rejects the contention that the struggle was in any straightforward sense an anti-colonial one or that its religious dimension can be ignored.
A collection of essays – including by Johan Galtung - on the life and work of Danilo Dolci, aimed at exploring his contribution to the practice of nonviolent civil resistance, to the project of building a resilient civil society and being an agent of change.
Article on grass roots women's organisation Sikhale Sonke demanding prosecutions and compensation for 2012 shooting of workers during the strike. The women had campaigned for five years against Lonmin and the government, as well as confronting deep seated discrimination against women in their society. War on Want has backed the women as part of a renewed campaign in the UK to offer solidarity.
Sikhale Sonke is also the subject of a documentary film 'Strike a Rock', from the 2017 Human Rights Watch Film Festival, that focuses on the struggle and friendship two women following the 2012 Marikana Massacre where 37 striking miners were killed by police.
A detailed account and analysis of the 'spontaneous and leaderless protest movement' that was strongest in Shia-dominated provinces, but spread across Iraq. Ali notes how protests in Baghdad in early October 2019 against the removal of a popular general, who had led the fight-back against ISIS, were also fuelled by anger at failures of basic services, such as water and electricity, and the pervasive political corruption. These demonstrations developed into a demand for a new political system to replace the US- imposed regime based on ethnicity and religious divides. The article then sets the 2019 movement in the context of earlier waves of protest, starting with the 2009 protests in Iraqi Kurdistan and the Sunni-majority protests in 2012-13 against their exclusion from political power. It also emphasizes the role of a new generation of protesters since 2015.
Retired US Army colonel, now colleague of Gene Sharp, examines the basis of political power and the methods and strategy of nonviolent struggle. His guidelines for preparing a Strategic Estimate are also included in Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle.
Haberkorn begins by describing a photographic exhibition at Thammasat university of the massacre of students there in October 1976 in connection with a military coup. The exhibition in October 2016, which commemorated the fortieth anniversary of that tragedy, had particular resonance in the context of the 2014 military coup and the death of the king after 70 years on the throne in 2016.
Biography of long-term prisoner and human rights campaigner who was increasingly critical of Rugova’s ‘passive’ approach.
Also available online as Joan Shorenstein Center Working Paper no. 3, 2006.
WOZA is one of the most imaginative and militant of the opposition groups and is also committed to nonviolence. See also Janet Cherry, Zimbabwe – Unarmed resistance, civil society and limits of international solidarity (E. I.2.2.iii. Zimbabwe. Resisting Autocracy since 2000-) .
Book by organizers of the Stop the War Coalition, created in 2001 after the September 11 attacks in the USA, which demonstrated against the Afghan War. It played a central role in mobilizing up to a million people to march in London in February 2003 and continued to demonstrate against the presence of western troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Although the role of the Socialist Workers Party in the Coalition was sometimes criticized, it succeeded in mobilizing large numbers of British Muslims in peaceful protest and in drawing in people from a broad political spectrum.
In this work, Monique Morris provides a statistical account on the lives of African Americans in the U.S. related to the field of education, environment, sport, health and justice system, military, politics, voting and civic engagement in order to highlight the disparity between racial communities.
This book uses case studies from a range of countries to provide a transnational and interdisciplinary analysis of trends in abortion politics, and considers how religion, nationalism, and culture impact on abortion law and access. It also explores the impact of international human rights norms and the role of activists on law reform and access to abortion. Finally the authors examine the future of abortion politics through the more holistic lens of ‘reproductive justice’. The countries included are: Argentina, Egypt, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, South Africa, Uruguay and the US.
This is an account of the origin and early years of the US Plowshares movement launched in 1980 by radical Catholics, and edited by two of the leading figures in this new form of personal ‘witness’ against nuclear weapons. Plowshares took inspiration from the biblical phrase ‘beat your swords into ploughshares’ and physically attacked missiles and associated targets, before publicizing their actions and accepting arrest and often subsequent imprisonment. This book explains their motivation, wider social beliefs, and provides details of early protests.
A journalist's eyewitness account of the uprising in Belarus from 4 August to 2 September, covering major demonstrations, strikes and the brutal regime response in Minsk and other parts of the country.
See also: Way, Lucan Ahmad, 'Belarus Uprising: How a Dictator Became Vulnerable', Journal of Democracy, vol. 31 no. 4. (October 2020), pp.17-27.
The author examines the mass popular response to the fraudulent presidential election, and clarifies how the protests differ from earlier 'colour revolutions', with leaders stressing not changes in foreign policy but free and democratic elections and constitutional government. He suggests that even if the uprising fails it shows that Lukashenko is vulnerable to popular challenge.
[Previously The Strategy of Civilian Defence]
Discusses campaigns of national unarmed resistance to military occupation (e.g. the Ruhr in 1923) and to both Nazi and Communist regimes. Basil Liddell Hart (pp. 228-46) compares guerrilla and nonviolent resistance to occupation. The 1969 edition analyses Czechoslovak resistance to Soviet occupation.
Seeks to explain why in 1989 there was a massacre in Beijing but not in Berlin or Prague. Similar discussion in Mark R. Thompson, Democratic Revolutions: Asia and Eastern Europe (A. 1.b. Strategic Theory, Dynamics, Methods and Movements) .
Observes that Cory Aquino’s movement seen as a third force by the US, though author rebuts US claims to have supported her before the fall of Marcos. Describes movement as ‘a genuine populist phenomenon’ with base in urban middle class, bringing onto the streets the lower middle class, unemployed workers and shanty town residents. Aquino avoided ties to the left, and did not need them to win the election, though – Bello claims – the left had paved the way for her ultimate success.
Perkins has been one of the leading activists in New South Wales and his role in leading protests is described in some detail.