Peaceful protests can work sometimes. Other times they do nothing. Same with armed resistance. Declaring one or the other to be the only possible way to bring about change is in direct contradiction to the facts.
Can you give an example? Every example I can think of right now that had a massacre of innocent protestors and no armed struggle either led to some change later down the road (eg. galvanizing the movement, reforms, or total collapse of the opressor), or became a major problem for the oppressor later down the track. A massacre is not that easily forgotten.
Just some random examples: The Polish protests of 1970, resulted in 42 people killed and protestors were overpowered by tanks and military, but the killings arguably accelerated the popularity of the movement. Look up the story of "Janek Wiśniewski" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janek_Wi%C5%9Bniewski
The aftermath of a massacre comes down to the government’s willingness and ability to control the narrative and suppress further dissent. Some governments can be quite successful at this. There’s absolutely no guarantee that a massacre of protestors results in anything beyond dead protestors.
Prague Spring lead to reforms and set the inspiration for the next generation that ended in victory (source https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr...) .
Rabaa, the situation is still ongoing, and unfortunately it's not a completely peaceful movement right now as it escalated to insurgency... (Source https://timep.org/esw/non-state-actors/revolutionary-punishm... )
The Prague Spring’s reforms were quickly reversed and the country was communist business as usual for decades afterwards. Crediting it for the fall of communism in 1989 seems like quite a stretch; for any successful protest, there will be failed ones that came before and provided influence. Does that mean that all protests are successful by definition when you look at a long enough timeline? Seems like a highly pointless metric if so.
CCP is still grappling with it.
Quote "As foundational as the crackdown at Tiananmen may have been to the CCP’s current strength, it remains largely invisible to the people. Despite claiming the moral high ground against what it calls a “counter-revolutionary” rebellion, the Party is still sensitive to the fact that its slaughter of students and laborers put a stain on its legitimacy."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5600363/china-tiananme...
Sorry, but you can't just burry a massacre, especially if it's been well documented.
> Does that mean that all protests are successful by definition when you look at a long enough timeline?
They may also look like separate events on the timeline, but still part of the same overall movement. Change doesn't happen overnight.
No, it's certainly not visible to the people. If you are talking about Chinese people, not HK people.
It began the process of deterioration of relations between the PRC and the Western democracies, a process that has continued to the present day. People began to realize that China may not liberalize on its own the way Taiwan did—that the government of the PRC is often hostile to liberal democracy. One of the consequences of this realization is in fact these Hong Kong protests. There are numerous other consequences of this cooling in relations too—for example, protectionist tariffs against a country seen as hostile to Western values are easier to sell politically in the West. Tariffs obviously impact China.
Tiananmen didn't achieve what the protestors wanted, but it's clearly a significant historical event.
The protesters in late 1980 might have been larger and more popular, but if the Soviet unreleased it might, it would not have mattered.
Of course, the other motivating factor was that the economy went to shit. People were hungry and tired of waiting in long queues with shelves at the stores almost empty. Nothing to do with "discussions and political institutions the elites were working in" though.
Hope doesn't work if there are tanks who shoot at you. The people in Poland were not braver then those in China or those in Hungary. The difference is that in those cases the political system had the will to oppose them with the force required.
Unarmed protestors simple can not win against an army. Its pure idealism to believe that.
- On June 9th this year, a million people joined a peaceful march fighting this bill. Carrie Lam's response? Go ahead with the Second Reading anyway.[1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_Movement
[1] https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201906/10/P2019061000710...
So far, it seems like it helped to inspire the current protestors, and they're much better organized this time round.
Revolutions, specially non-violent once succeed if the political establishment does not have the will or tools to resist.
The protestors in Europe and China were probably equally as brave. While in the Soviet system the elites had already divided and paralyzed themselves, that was the fundamental condition that allowed protest to be successful in eastern Europe.
The people in China, were simply shot down and 30 years after the CCP is in control still. The exact same thing could have happened in the Soviet Union, if the elites had not already crippled themselves.
Governments with modern arms don't fall to rebellions unless some significant part of the elite is either at least passive or actively supporting the revolution.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2014/07/24/the-proven...
[2] https://www.fastcompany.com/3040831/peaceful-protest-slow-an...
That’s facially not true. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Bangladeshi War of Independence, Irish independence, etc. History is full of examples where the right to self determination had to be vindicated with guns.
Categorically delegitimizing violence against an oppressive state is a bad precedent. Obviously it should not be accepted as routine. But it is an important safety valve. The Irish won their independence, after hundreds of years of oppression at the hands of the British, by starting a shooting war that the British could not put down while maintaining appearances among the community of nations. If violence had been categorically delegitimized in the early 20th century, the British could have used more heavy handed measures to put down the Irish Revolution while the community of nations looked the other way.
Now, whether Hong Kong wants to or has the capability to do that against China is an entirely separate matter.