#Resist

Woman makes a stand against a water cannon.

Some people confuse resistance with anarchy. They believe, or it suits them to believe, that anyone protesting on the street, or in a park is just “asking for trouble”. Even if they are doing it peacefully, by sitting on the grass, with music and books. But the exact form of a public protest is irrelevant.

Even when the purpose of a protest has nothing political about it. Such as when attempting to protect a large park in the middle of a bustling city, which is about to be turned into a mall. The 94th, if my information is accurate. But even the cause of a protest is not really the issue here.

What really matters is that the state is treating its own citizens as enemies. And it is not happening just in Turkey or Greece or Bulgaria or Spain or Sweden. It is fast becoming a global phenomenon. The difference is that police in Turkey are that much more brutal in suppressing protesters. They don’t need to use agents provocateurs, like the Greek police still do (on most occasions – the last time I was in a protest all it took for the tear gas rain to start was a few kids tossing fruit towards the Parliament).

I never thought I’d see more tear gas canisters being used at once than that February evening at Syntagma. Was I ever wrong.

Used tear gas canisters

The reports coming in from Istanbul (or Constantinople, as we prefer to call it in Greece) are mostly unverified because of the media blackout on the protests. However, there are now reports from Reuters that tear gas canisters were fired directly on the crowd, resulting in a woman being severely injured. A couple of months ago Greek police fired gas canisters into a schoolyard, injuring a girl on the head and sending several into the infirmary.

There are reports of four dead protesters on Friday and the protests continue today, also spreading to other major cities in Turkey.

These things are not happening in dictatorships. These are supposed to be modern democratic states and yet police violence grows unchecked. But these events force us to consider where the boundaries of order-keeping lie and where civil liberties begin.

A state which suppresses its citizens when protesting peacefully, for whatever reason, can no longer be considered democratic. At the heart of democracy lies the will of the people and that cannot be expressed solely by elections every four years. And that is because being elected does not grant politicians the power to make any decision they want, without taking into consideration the well being of the people. Nor is the police justified in injuring or, worse, killing the very civilians it is supposed to protect.

Furthermore, these democratic “lapses” also bring to light our own responsibilities as citizens. States and governments, when left to their own devices, can and will pass laws which do not serve the interests of the people. It can be as simple as demolishing a large park or as complicated as bleeding the people dry for the sins of the banking and monetary system.

Unjust laws and policies must be resisted. Politicians catering to the interests of the financial elite must be resisted. Democracy has to be safeguarded and protected, and that duty lies with the citizens. There are very few states in the world which can function truly democratically without being “reminded” to do so by the people. The proof of this is everyday in the news, if and when it is allowed to appear.

Resistance in this context is not just a right, but an obligation of the people.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

-Mahatma Gandhi