Gene Sharp: "Using violence is a stupid decision"

The strategic wisdom of nonviolent resistance


Gene Sharp turned 84 on January 21. At a time in his life when most are enjoying their retirement, Gene is on the move spreading the word on strategic nonviolence and working at the Albert Einstein Institution. On Tuesday, February 7, 2012 he will be speaking at the Documentary Film Festival: Human Rights Human Wrongs in Oslo, following the sold out Norway premiere screening of How to Start a Revolution. There is also a second opportunity to watch the documentary by Ruaridh Arrow and meet Gene Sharp on Friday, February 10, 2012 at 3:00pm.

Interviewed in the United Kingdom by Channel 4 News International Editor Lindsey Hilsum, on Sunday, February 5, 2012 nonviolent theorist Gene Sharp gave the following advice to the opposition in Syria:

"Maintain non-violence, do not organise soldiers to use violence against the remaining army. That is suicidal. That becomes a tool - that is what the government would want you to do". ... "Use the mutinous soldiers to persuade the rest of the soldiers also to mutiny - take the army away then the regime will come tumbling down."

In another interview in the United Kingdom on the BBC News program HARDtalk on January 30, 2012 Dr. Sharp said that "using violence is a stupid decision."

Full page advert of the Human Rights film festival

History backs up Gene's assertion. University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They found that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. Finally there study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.” This also depends on the nonviolent opposition movement having a strategic vision and maintaining its non-violent posture even under the worse repression.

Narcotics Anonymous in a 1981 publication they called "the basic text" observed that "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results." The same holds true for both drug addicts and those who rely on violence. History has demonstrated that nonviolence is a superior method of struggle that offers both a greater chance for success and less death and destruction. In September 2011, Gene Sharp spoke at Zeitgeist of the Americas and following his presentation the moderator said that for Every Egypt and Tunisia were nonviolence worked there was a Libya and Syria where it had not. Sharp responded saying that was an oversimplification and went on to give the following response.

Don't lump Syria and Libya together

"...Syria is very different from Libya. In Libya you had very quickly a military intervention. One of Qaddafi's generals with his troops and guns changed sides supposedly. I have a suspicion that he was an extreme agent provocateur and he was later killed in the rebel camp. For months foreign military assistance was brought by NATO, and the United States, France and all the rest. That wasn't nonviolence certainly anymore. That kind of thing ...Violence can wreck a nonviolent struggle movement. So that is not a good example."

"In Syria they are still going. I have been startled and amazed at the not only the nonviolent discipline . Only scattered violence in the midst of all kinds of killing almost every day by people who say 'we are not afraid.' This is what Gandhi was trying to tell the Indians 'don't be afraid, cast off fear'. I always honestly thought he was being a little romantic and naive. The Syrians and others have said 'we are not afraid anymore' and that is what terrifies the dictators. Thats why the brutality is so great in Syria. They think that if only they are brutal enough the resistance will collapse. So far the dictators have been proved wrong. But this is not easy. If you have people within your movement who do not keep discipline, who decide to do this or that, or you don't have a plan, you don't have a strategy, how the hell are you going to win? And yet people try to do that all the time. They have to learn what makes it effective, and what makes it fail and do the things that make it successful."

Later on during the question and answer period Gene Sharp highlights the reality that those in power will do anything to stay in power and that means that you have to be as prepared as possible in engaging in a nonviolent struggle.

"You have to learn how to do it skillfully. If you are going to fight a war violently you don't go to all the neighborhood bars and get all the guys out there and say lets go fight a war but thats about the way nonviolent struggle has been conducted over the centuries. People were improvising. They didn't know what the hell they were doing. What would make it effective? What should they be aware of? Who was this guy who was urging violence? They didn't know he was a tool of the political police. This happened in the Russian empire ... and repeatedly. It also happened I am told with the Gestapo doing that. Dictators and rulers who fear the power of people will do their damndest to defeat it and you have to know how to be smarter than they are and more courageous and more skilled in what you do."

The full interview is available below:

There is more than a century of evidence that nonviolence is more effective then violence with better long term results yet the cult of violence remains. Professor Erica Chenoweth speaking at Dartmouth University offers an explanation, reported in the student paper The Dartmouth, that still asks why?: “Often violence is serving very personal functions for people. “Rational insurgents should be able to substitute the method that works for one that doesn’t, but people are hanging onto violence for dear life, and I don’t know why.”

One could say it is an example of mass insanity. Hopefully its survivable.

Marginalizing dissidents and white washing the Castro regime's crimes

Befriending tyrants while dismissing Yoani Sanchez and international human rights standards

Dilma Rousseff and Raul Castro in Havana 2012

Over emphasizing and romanticizing the importance of political violence while remaining mute on the Castro regime's torture and extrajudicial execution of opposition figures along with its role in fomenting political violence and terrorism internationally is a difficult task but Julia Sweig, the director of the Latin America program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) manages to do so in the February 1, 2012 article by Matthew Bristow in Bloomberg titled "Dissident blogger says Cuba wanted more on human rights from Rousseff trip":“Yoani’s situation bears zero comparison to what Dilma went through. Unlike Dilma, she hasn’t been and won’t be jailed or tortured and I seriously doubt she’s going to be president of Cuba.”

Yoani Sanchez shortly after 2009 abduction and attack

On November 6, 2009 Yoani Sanchez was kidnapped and beaten up by Cuban state security agents. Other Cuban women have suffered greater abuses for being members of the Ladies in White or simply demanding democratic reforms. They have suffered harassment, beatings, arbitrary detentions and in the case of Laura Pollan what amounts to a very sophisticated form of torture that resulted in her death on October 14, 2011 in at what best could be described as "purposeful medical neglect." She is not the only one.

Yoani Sanchez wearing a t-shirt with image of the late Laura Pollan

To say that Yoani Sanchez will not be arrested in the future or possibly subjected to torture is to ignore 53 years of history under the Castro brothers, but then again Professor Sweig has been known to overlook the Castro regime's history. One example is found on page XIV of the acknowledgements of her May 2002 book Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground Julia Sweig lists a number of people who assisted her in writing the book. Two names stand out: Elsa Montera Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad who Sweig described as championing the project. This husband and wife team were working as Cuban diplomats at the Cuba Mission in New York City but were in reality State Security agents. Both were expelled for their role in a planned terrorist attack on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1962 with the objective of detonating 500 kilos of explosives inside Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.

Cuban diplomats/terrorists and "champions" of Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations

Yoani Sanchez has empowered other Cubans with knowledge of how to circumvent regime controls and speak to the world. She took a leading role in a campaign in 2008 to seek the freedom of Cuban punk rocker Gorki Aguila who faced prison for his punk attitude and political lyrics. Finally she has provided an unfiltered perspective on what Cubans are going through on the island. She is also demonstrating first hand the power of "living in truth" as a free Cuban in Cuba today despite being denied the right to travel outside of her country on 19 occasions. The irony that on this 19th occasion she received a visa from Brazil last month to travel there to attend the premiere of a documentary on media freedom in Cuba. The denial came shortly after a visit by the Brazilian president who when asked about it said that "Brazil gave the visa to the blogger. The rest is not a matter for the Brazilian government". Apparently, President Rousseff does not view as an international matter Article 13 subsection 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states:

"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."

Dilma Rousseff, as a young women in the late 1960s was inspired to take up arms against a right wing military dictatorship. The military had overthrown a democratically elected left wing president out of fear that he would turn Brazil into another Cuba. Opposition to military rule split into two strategies one violent and the other nonviolent.

Iconic poster of Rousseff's guerilla past

Rousseff, although claiming not to have fired on the police or military, does admit to having been a member of the "National Liberation Command" (NLC) which is described in the same terms as the Red Army Faction, a German left wing terror group. The magazine, Piauí, says that despite her denials now that she handled weapons for the group. The NLC was inspired by the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (Organización de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latina)[OSPAAAL]that was founded by the Castro brothers and Che Guevara at the 1966 Tricontinental meeting in Havana.

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara's example are what led Dilma Rousseff to join an organization that robbed banks and assassinated police officers that ended with most of her compatriots dead or in prison. Dilma wound up captured, tortured over 22 days and put on trial then prison between 1970 and 1972. The violent option in Brazil was crushed.

Dilma Rousseff in the dock in 1970

What ended the military dictatorship? A nonviolent political opposition able to build coalitions and with a worsening economy pressure the military into transitioning back to democracy.

It was not Dilma Rousseff's guerrilla past that got her elected president but her talents as an efficient administrator in the Lula government that raised her profile nationally and got the attention of the voters.

Dilma Rousseff is no Lech Walesa nor a Vaclav Havel. Yoani Sanchez with her embrace of nonviolence, rejecting hatred and risking everything to express herself follows more closely in their tradition.

Yoani Sanchez is no Dilma Rousseff. Thank goodness.

Professor Sweig is half right Yoani Sanchez bears zero comparison with Dilma Rousseff. Her choices as a young woman are not only morally far superior but have also been much more effective in empowering her fellow citizens for a democratic change than the sterile path chosen to confront the military dictatorship by Rousseff. Also it doesn't take much courage to attack the human rights record of the United States raising the issue of Guantanamo while ignoring human rights violations in Cuba while in the island meeting with Cuban officials. Not exactly a profile in courage.

Dilma Rousseff's 1970 mugshot

Thankfully, the democratic institutions and political currents that pressured the military into a democratic opening and now pressured the granting of the visa to Yoani Sanchez should also keep the current president from allowing her admiration and pride in meeting with Fidel Castro from turning into a dark chapter for Brazilian democracy as Hugo Chavez has been for democracy in Venezuela.

Rousseff still admires Castro and Che Guevara

Aung San Suu Kyi's Farewell Letter to Vaclav Havel

Letter from Burma: Vaclav Havel

Aung San Suu Kyi is seen at the National League for Democracy headquarters in Yangon, Burma, in this Oct. 27, 2011 file photo. In the background, is a portrait of her father, General Aung San. (Mainichi)

When I decided that the first Letter from Burma of 2012 should be about the late Vaclav Havel, I wondered how I should entitle the article. My thoughts immediately went to the little red heart he usually drew as part of his signature. Perhaps I should write about him as "The Heart President" or "The Heart Leader" or "The Dissident with A Heart" or "The Intellectual with A Heart?" In the end I decided that the name Vaclav Havel alone was more potent and meaningful than any fancy title I could think up.

It was during the first year of my house arrest, 1989, that the name of Vaclav Havel became familiar to me. The Velvet Revolution, the Civic Forum, the electoral victory that turned the premier dissident of Czechoslovakia into the first President of the newly democratic republic: I learnt about it all from my small portable radio and shared in the euphoria of political transformation in that far off land. However, I did not realize at that time that Vaclav Havel would become a personal friend.

It is a little strange to speak of a man I had never met and with whom I had barely corresponded as a personal friend. It was his vigorous and warm personality and his total commitment to the support of movements for democracy and human rights the world over that made his friendship so real and vibrant and made me feel we were linked to one another by close ties of understanding. He nominated me for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 because he believed it would help to focus international attention on our struggle. Had he allowed his name to be put forward as a candidate that year I am convinced he would have been the chosen laureate. He surely valued the Nobel Peace Prize, for he would not have wanted to give to the cause of democracy and human rights something on which he did not value himself. But it was a matter of chivalry: "Their need is greater than mine."

When my family were permitted to visit me in 1992, my husband brought me a copy of The Power of the Powerless. I have just flicked quickly through the pages of this now shabby, well-thumbed volume and reread some of the phrases I underlined in the book. "... an examination of the potential of the 'powerless' -- can only begin with an examination of the nature of power in the circumstances in which these powerless people operate ..." "... freedom is indivisible ..." "... not standing up for the freedom of others, regardless of how remote their means of creativity or their attitude to life, meant surrendering one's own freedom ..." "A better system will not automatically create a better life. In fact the opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a better system be developed ..." Ideas that seem simple yet which enmesh with basic human aspirations only when formulated with clarity by an exceptional mind.

A high intellect is no substitute for a generous heart, and it is the latter that I appreciate most in Vaclav Havel. He was a rare dissident, one who did not forget fellow dissidents in remote parts of the world even after he became the Head of State of his own country. His heart was not only generous but appealingly light, expressing its solidarity with ordinary people everywhere in the simplest way. His To the Castle and Back begins with the words: "I've run away. I've run away to America. I've run away for two months with the whole family; that is, with Dasa and our two boxers, Sugar and her daughter Madlenka." The gleeful declaration of flight and the place (right at the heart of the family) that he accorded to his dogs drew me across miles and years into the warm circle of his home. How did a man so far from ordinary manage to retain the common touch?

Vaclav Havel spoke to me once on the telephone, about a year ago. He was already in poor health and his voice was weak but he managed to convey his joy at my release from house arrest and his concern for all of us who were still far from our democratic goal. Even in his final illness he did not forget us. The last letter he wrote to me was placed in my hands a few days after his death by one of his old friends, Mr. Sasakawa Yohei.

"Dear Friend," the letter began, "Over the years I sent you a number of letters inviting you to attend various international conferences and other events that I organized. I did it being perfectly aware that the chances of you attending are non-existent but I still did it out of principle and to remind the authorities that confiscated my letters to you that we constantly think of you and support you." The spirit with which he championed the cause of the oppressed had remained intact. His interest in our struggle, too, had continued strong: "Dear friend, I am following the recent developments in your country with a very, very cautious optimism." He ended his letter on a practical, modest note. "... if there is anything we can do to help -- for example -- and only if you wish -- to share some of our transformational experience with you we shall gladly do it."

I will feel the absence of my friend as we continue along the road he walked before us.

By Aung San Suu Kyi

(Mainichi Japan) January 30, 2012

An Epiphany on the upcoming Papal visit to Cuba

"You cultivate the essential virtues: high purpose, intelligence, decency, humility, fear of the Lord, and the passion for freedom." - William F. Buckley Jr.

Pontifical Mass at the Church of the Epiphany

Thursday night February 2, 2012 at 7:30pm I was seated inside the Church of the Epiphany attending the first Pontifical Mass in Florida in 40 years presided over by the Archbishop of Miami Thomas Wenski. It was a Candlemas in the Extraordinary Form also known as The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is the last day of the Christmas season. The Pontifical Mass lasted three hours. More than a thousand people participated in the Mass. Outside of the Church demonstrators gathered to protest the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Cuba. In between prayers for a sick friend and the well being of friends and family members the Mass in Latin drew this participant further into spiritual reflection than the Mass normally does in the vernacular.



Archbishop Wenski's homily delivered in a steady and calm voice was powerful and stirring an excerpt is reproduced below:

Mary’s life – and our own lives – if we, like her, follow Jesus to the end, will be lived under the sign of the cross. For in a fallen world, in a world that has turned its back on God, those who live “ad orientam,” that is, looking, in joyful expectation, towards the coming of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, inevitably will encounter opposition and resistance. Such was the life of Christ – and such was the life of his mother who at Calvary shared in his sufferings; such is the life of the Church.

The “thoughts of many hearts” have been revealed in the betrayals and apostasies of the Church’s sinners but also in the constancy of her confessors, in the purity of her virgins and in the courage of her martyrs. Blessed John Paul II, when as Karol Wojtyla he preached a Lenten retreat to Pope Paul VI, said that “sign of contradiction” maybe be the “distinctive definition of Christ and his Church.”

Today, the witness of the Church on behalf of the dignity and right to life of the human person from the first moment of conception till natural death is itself a “sign that will be contradicted” – and is in fact contradicted in the present mandate of the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate to deny a religious exemption to Catholic institutions and thus force us to violate our consciences and to make us accomplices in evil.

Today’s feast of the Presentation of the Lord – thanks to the initiative of Blessed John Paul II – is also observed as the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life. Those who live their Christian baptism through vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as religious sisters, brothers and priests, should see the oblation of the Son of God presented today in the temple as the model for religious life. We pray for them – may their perseverance in seeking first the Kingdom of God above all else inspire all of us to seek to live holy lives in fidelity to the promises of our baptism.

The lighted candles carried in procession this evening are a sign of the divine splendor of the Christ who comes to expel the dark shadows of evil. May our lives as Catholics reflect the light of Christ to all who meet us; and may that same light guide us, as it guided that righteous and devout man, Simeon, when we go forth from this life to meet Christ.

The full homily is available online at the website of the Archdiocese of Miami and worth reading.

The following day I was invited to briefly address the Pope's visit to the island on a local television station giving me an opportunity to further reflect on it. Reading medieval scholar Carlos Eire on the subject offers historical context to what is happening in relations between the Church and the communist dictatorship in Cuba. At the same time reading Carlos Espinosa gives insights into the impact it is having within some families.


Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. "The Fight over Catholic Orthodoxy" (1980)

Although not as pessimistic about the Pope's visit to the island as the individuals who protested outside of the Church of the Epiphany one can understand their concern considering some of the historical and modern currents in the Catholic Church. There was a time that Liberation theology was on the upswing in the Catholic Church but Pope John Paul II put an end to that. In his sermon "An option for the poor" given in Mexico in 1990 His Holiness spoke plainly:

When the world begins to notice the clear failures of certain ideologies and systems, it seems all the more incomprehensible that certain sons of the Church in these lands - prompted at times by the desire to find quick solutions - persist in presenting as viable certain models whose failure is patent in other places in the world.

You, as priests, cannot be involved in activities which belong to the lay faithful, while through your service to the Church community you are called to cooperate with them by helping them study Church teachings...

...Be careful, then, not to accept nor allow a Vision of human life as conflict nor ideologies which propose class hatred and violence to be instilled in you; this includes those which try to hide under theological writings.

There are other currents within the Church that do give reason for encouragement. Pope Benedict XVI emerged from a current within the Church that has accomplished great things on behalf of orthodoxy and tradition. The question that Cuban exiles need to ask themselves is how to encourage and support those currents that will more robustly challenge the militant atheistic communist dictatorship in Cuba?

At the same time remembering that Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the island (March 26-28, 2012) will offer an opportunity for Cubans in large numbers to hear the Gospel and the message of hope and freedom that resides in it. The visit of Pope John Paul II that met with similar criticism at the time was, in spiritual terms, incredibly important to the millions of Cubans who heard his message and his exhortation not to be afraid and to be the protagonists of their own history.

Fourteen years later many Cubans who heeded his message are being persecuted for seeking change using ethical, nonviolent means. This is part of the legacy of John Paul II. It is no accident that the largest sustained dissident action was the Varela Project petition drive (named after a Cuban catholic priest) that obtained more than 25,000 signatures demanding fundamental changes to the Cuban constitution to bring it in line with international human rights standards. Nor is it an accident that the largest sustained opposition action are the weekly marches by the Ladies in White to attend Sunday Mass demanding their loved one's freedom. Since March of 2003 following the Black Cuban Spring these women have been subjected to acts of repudiation, physical assaults, and in the case of Laura Pollan - premature death at the hands of agents of the Cuban government.

One understands that the Pope will meet with sinners, possibly including Fidel Castro, excommunicated by John XXIII on January 3, 1962, but at the same time one would also hope that some of those who have suffered beatings, tortures and assaults on their dignity at the hands of this regime would also be ministered to by His Holiness.

At the same time one cannot forget that the Church in Cuba is a suffering Church that has endured decades of repression and has engaged in important evangelical and charitable work at the parish level that has saved countless souls and lives.

Protesters outside the Church of the Epiphany on Thursday evening during the Mass

The protesters sign outside of the Mass on Thursday night said a profound truth that perhaps they did not themselves understand the full significance of: "We must not forget. Faith is not negotiable. Long live Christ the King!" The good works of the Church transcend the princes and principalities of this fallen world and calls all of humanity to Jesus Christ and his teachings as set out in the Bible as the only way to real freedom. Don't forget it. An epiphany long to be remembered.

Season for Nonviolence: January 30 - April 4, 2012

"I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power that can move the world." - Mohandas Gandhi, Young India Journal, September 1920

"Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation." - Martin Luther King Jr.


Half a century after the January 30, 1948 assassination of Mohandas Gandhi by a Hindu extremist and thirty years after the April 4, 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi's grandson, Arun Gandhi, began organizing an annual Season of Nonviolence that begins on January 30 and ends on April 4th. King was deeply influenced by Gandhi and in the video below he explains how Gandhian thought influenced him.


Martin Luther King Jr. speaks on how he became influenced by Gandhi's techniques

Both Gandhi and King have made a tremendous impact not only in their respective countries but around the world. In a real sense their legacies can be seen in the nonviolent movements confronting injustices around the world.

Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Oscar Elias Biscet

In Cuba, for example, nonviolent opposition activists have studied the writings of nonviolent thinkers. Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, who has spent more than a decade in Cuban prisons for his non-violent opposition to the dictatorship in that country in a lengthy blog post on June 17, 2011 explained that:

“[A]lthough Cubans are living in a society of fear, the opposition democrats have adhered to and consolidated in the principles of nonviolent civic struggle. The theories of Henry Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Junior and Gene Sharp, considered by the regime as subversive books, are the guide of this nonviolent resistance movement.”

Dr. Biscet is one of the many followers of Gandhi and King making a difference around the world. Aung San Suu Kyi, who is currently carrying out a nonviolent struggle following the Gandhian tradition, is changing both Burma, her homeland, and the world. In the video below she speaks out on the impact of nonviolence and Gandhi on the movement in Burma.



Suu Kyi's words bear taking a closer look at:

We are convinced that the non-violent approach is the best. We are convinced that in the long run it pays off, even if over time it is actually longer, because it is a non-violent approach. For example, if we consider a country like India, which was very much influenced by Gandhiji's non-violent philosophy, you can see how clear the military has kept away from politics. India has had many, many political upheavals and it has faced many problems, and it probably will have many problems to face in the future, but I think the seed of non-violence that was planted before independence has helped them a great deal in resolving their problems in as democratic a way as is possible under the circumstances. So we want to keep to the non-violent approach.

Another who changed the world and passed away on December 18, 2011 was Vaclav Havel. Havel was an admirer of Gandhi. On February 8, 1994 in New Delhi while accepting the Indira Gandhi prize Havel outlined Gandhi's influence on him:

“I am one of Mahatma Gandhi's admirers, and, if I may be so bold, I believe that a reflection of his life's work might even be seen in the attempt my friends and I made, in Charter 77, to create a nonviolent opposition to the totalitarian regime in our country. This aspect of our activity later had a positive influence on the course of our anti-totalitarian revolution in 1989.”

Underprivileged Indian children dressed to look like the late Mahatma Gandhi arrive on a bus in Kolkata, India, before attempting a world record for being the largest gathering of people dressed as Gandhi, Jan. 29. Bikas Das / AP

The 15th Season for Nonviolence begins tomorrow on January 30, 2012 and there are activities being organized around the world. There is still time for you to organize something in your own community to defend, promote and work towards living in a nonviolent way in your own corner of the world.