by Roland Vogt

Nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience have a common umbrella term: nonviolent action (GA). This means two things: firstly, it refers to forms of social conflict that consciously refrainfrom violence against other people, which is more accurately described in English and in some Romance languages as non-violent action; secondly, it is about being active, i.e. anything other than doing nothing. Nonviolent action is usually motivated by conditions that are perceived as intolerable, often unjust.

This was the case, for example, on December 1, 1955, when the African-American Rosa Parks simply refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger. This happened in Montgomery in the US southern state of Alabama. Hard to believe: Rosa Parks had violated a racial segregation law in force in the region at the time by refusing to do so and was arrested for it. She was a seamstress by profession. She was also the secretary of the local branch of the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, so she was well connected. Her "violation of the rules", which was celebrated as heroic in the black community, and the arrest, which was generally perceived as unjust, caused such outrage in the black community that a bus boycott took place in Montgomery a few days later. Rosa's fellow African-Americans preferred to walk, take a cab, organize car pools in cars or ride on horseback through the streets of Montgomery. They maintained this bus boycott for more than a year, causing the bus company to lose significant profits, as three quarters of all passengers had been black people before the boycott.

The brave seamstress's act of resistance not only changed her life, but also the life of a young pastor named Martin Luther King. He had recently moved to Montgomery with his family to take up his first pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. He soon became a generally recognized spokesman for the initially regional movement against the harassment of racial segregation. After a long dry spell, King and the boycott movement were successful across the board: on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. declared the segregation laws for buses unconstitutional - with effect in all states of the USA. Martin Luther King celebrated this success by demonstratively taking a seat next to a white man on the bus shortly after the court ruling, together with the congenial Ralph Abernathy. Many whites were not prepared to accept this defeat without a fight. Martin Luther King and some of his fellow campaigners received death threats before and after the constitutional court decision. There were bomb attacks on churches and homes of the black community. Buses carrying African-Americans again after the boycott success were shot at and pelted with stones. But the Montgomery Improvement Association, which the resistance movement against white racism had formed early on and whose president was Martin Luther King, had opted for a non-violent approach from the outset. As difficult as life continued to be for black people in Montgomery even after the success of their movement, for the black community in the United States the Montgomery Bus Boycott was and remains a milestone on the Long March to racial equality - and for the rest of the world a lesson in successful non-violent resistance.

But how did Martin Luther King justify his decision in favor of strict non-violence despite all the adversity faced by his fellow campaigners, himself and his family? With a critique of violence: "The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a downward spiral and creates the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. You may murder a liar by violence, but you cannot kill the lie, still less give truth its place. By violence you murder the hater, but not the hatred. In fact, violence only increases hatred. Returning violence with violence multiplies violence andadds even deeper darkness to a starless night. Darkness cannot dispel darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."[2]

Classification of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Both Rosa Park's resistance behavior and the subsequent campaign by Martin Luther King and his comrades-in-arms can easily be classified under the umbrella term nonviolent action. It is pointless to differentiate here between non-violent resistance and civil disobedience, because it was non-violent resistance and civil disobedience in one: the refusal to vacate the seat was followed by the passive letting of the arrest. In other words, non-violent and partly passive resistance. At the same time, Rosa Park was aware that she had broken a hitherto generally binding norm, i.e. civil disobedience. The intensity of this increases as the interaction progresses: the spontaneous violation of a norm perceived as unjust expands through external support into a campaign with the aim of influencing public opinion and fundamentally overcoming the injustice[3].

Civil disobedience: "Turn your life into a counterweight"

The term civil disobedience was coined by the American Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) in his essay On Civil Disobedience[4] in which he explained why he stopped paying taxes in protest against the war in Mexico and slavery. For Thoreau, military service in war and the imposition of supporting such state injustice by paying taxes are cases in which a citizen can, indeed must, refuse to obey the state for reasons of conscience: "But if the law is so constituted that it necessarily makes you the arm of injustice to another, then I say: break the law. Make your life a counterweight to stop the machine. At any rate, I must see that I do not give myself up to the injustice I condemn."[5]

Gandhi's independent strategy of "Sathiagraha"

The Indian Mohandas Karamchand Ghandhi, who trained as a lawyer in England, gained his first experience in struggles for the emancipation of the Indian minority in South Africa. When he returns to India, his reputation as a tribune of the people has already preceded him. Although he had set up an Indian medical brigade in South Africa to fight the Boers, he planned to liberate India from the British colonial yoke not by recruiting a military force from among his followers, but with the help of his sathiagraha strategy, which was derived from specifically Indian traditions. The term comes from Sanskrit and is composed of the words sathia: truth and agraha: to grasp, but goes far beyond this because it also contains other messages such as the power of love, the power of the soul, the power of God that works within us.

Up to now, I have helped myself by translating sathiagraha as "adherence to the truth of the power of non-violence once recognized as effective". Gandhi, who was aware of the translation dilemma, used the term Civil Disobedience to explain the Indian struggle for emancipation in South Africa and the liberation movement for India to his English-speaking followers and readers, but felt that Civil Disobedience did not convey the full meaning of Sathiagraha. Therefore, he preferred the term Civil Resistance for the English-speaking audience.[7]

As part of the strategy of sathiagraha, the feelings and conscience of the respective addressee should be addressed. Through ahimsa, avoidance of violence, non-violence, accompanied by the willingness to accept pain and suffering (love force or soul force), sathiagraha aims to convince the opponent of the wrongness of his actions: "the goal of sathiagrahi is to convert the wrongdoer, not to conquer him"[8].

The fascinating thing about the applied strategy of sathiagraha is that on a large scale in the Indian subcontinent, the idea of non-violence has been brought to fruition. "There, where people refused to cooperate with the authorities, where taxes were no longer paid, where people began to free themselves from dependence on foreign goods by, among other things, establishing domestic cloth production, the mechanisms of colonial oppression became ineffective. In ever new non-violent protest marches and fasting campaigns, the world public was made aware of the injustice of the situation until even in England, large sections of the public supported the demand for independence and self-determination of the Indian people and ultimately deprived the British government of the legitimacy for its actions. With the victory of the Indians over the British colonial power, it became clear what power can be developed through non-violent resistance when people begin to reflect on their actual social influence and use it as they see fit."[9]

It is often overlooked that the British colonial power did not shy away from using brute force to break the non-violent resistance in India. The use of iron-shod clubs to beat the heads of Sathiagrahi advancing non-violently against the Dharasana salt works is notorious. There were deaths and serious injuries. Only the fortunate circumstance that an American reporter was an eyewitness and reported the "Battle of Dharasana" first-hand in the world press meant that the blatant disparity between India's willingness to suffer and the brute force of the colonial power turned parts of the world public into allies of the Indian freedom struggle.

After another salt march to the Indian Ocean, tens of thousands of non-violent fighters were arrested and thrown into prisons. The grain of salt could become a symbol of resistance because Indians were forbidden to extract salt to ensure that the population of the subcontinent only bought the expensive salt of the colonial power.

Non-violent resistance & civil disobedience are not yesterday's strategies

The campaigns and strategies coined by "Mahatma" Gandhi and Martin Luther King continue to inspire resistance movements around the world to this day. Even in seemingly hopeless conflicts, people can be found acting with undaunted confidence in the power of non-violence. Even in the hopelessly deadlocked conflict between the Palestinians and the Israeli government, we hear reports of non-violent resistance groups and attempts to bring about reconciliation through the power of non-violence[10].

In Germany, there have been and still are several examples of successful campaigns of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience. In conclusion, three cases will be briefly presented here as examples.

1. the resistance against the nuclear power plants Kaiseraugst (CH), Fessenheim (F) and Wyhl (D) in the border triangle Germany/France/Switzerland

The transnational International Committee of Baden-Alsace Citizens' Initiatives had committed the regional resistance movement against the three nuclear power plants to a non-violent strategy from the outset. The non-violent occupation of the construction site for the Wyhl nuclear power plant, which began in February 1975 and continued for months, is famous. The strategy of the Baden-Alsatian citizens' initiatives consisted not only of non-violent actions and acts of civil disobedience, but also of a variety of accompanying measures. Complaints to the competent administrative courts played a prominent role. Even if these did not always lead to complete success, they did buy time in certain precarious phases to catch one's breath and for new strategic considerations. The decisive factor in the Baden-Württemberg state government finally abandoning the Wyhl nuclear power plant project was probably the realization that a nuclear power plant at this site could not be implemented against the will of the Kaiserstuhl population and that the ruling CDU party would have been threatened with a loss of power in the "Muschderländle" if it had maintained the initial violent policy of enforcement by all means. Due to the dangers posed by the old Fessenheim reactor on the French side of the Rhine, cross-border resistance remains unbroken to this day. Some veteran opponents of nuclear power plants from "üswärts" can still find the well-known "AKW-no" stickers in Freiburg and throughout Baden. These remind us that the dangers of civilian nuclear technology may have been averted following the German government's decision to phase out nuclear power, but by no means the danger of nuclear radiation caused by an accident in one of the reactor units in a neighboring country.

2 The FREIeHEIDe movement and its successful fight against an air-to-ground firing range in Kyritz-Ruppiner Heide

The former BOMBODROM used by the Soviet armed forces between the towns of Neuruppin, Rheinsberg and Wittstock, a military training area where bombing was practiced for decades, was to be used by the German Air Force as an air-to-ground firing range after reunification, according to the plans of the Federal Minister of Defense. As a result, the citizens' initiative (BI) FREIeHEIDe (FH) was founded, whose very spelling of its name was a recognizable reference to the experiences of the non-violent Wende movement. In addition, the strategy of the BI FH drew on the experience of "newcomers" and allies with expertise from the Western European non-violent action movements, such as the successful resistance against the expansion of a military training area in Larzac, Occitan in the south of France (the region where Roquefort cheese comes from...) and the equally successful resistance against the Wyhl nuclear power plant. The FREIeHEIDe movement organized spectacular demonstrations, so-called protest marches, which swelled to become the largest manifestation of the Easter march movement at Easter - with sympathizers from all over Germany, West and East.

Similar to the resistance against the Wyhl nuclear power plant, the FREIeHEIDe movement pulled out all the stops of civil resistance, i.e.: apart from imaginative demonstrations, visits to the site and even a simulated occupation of the site to signal the willingness to engage in civil disobedience in an "emergency", parliamentary and extra-parliamentary alliances at all political levels, administrative court actions, etc. The BI FH was joined by the Mecklenburg "Bürgerinitiative Freier Himmel" citizens' initiative and, on the Brandenburg side, an association of companies, particularly from the hotel industry, which feared considerable economic losses as a result of the air-to-ground firing range. After 17 years of tenacious resistance, the lawyers of affected neighboring communities, entrepreneurs and the district won 27 administrative court cases against the German Armed Forces and the Federal Minister of Defense. The decisive factor in the final decision by the Federal Ministers of Defence Jung and von Guttenberg to renounce the use of the area, first as an air-to-ground firing range and finally as a military training area, was probably that those responsible at all relevant political levels finally realized that an air-to-ground firing range in this region would have impaired the emerging tourism industry and that this - similar to the nuclear power plant in Wyhl - could not be enforced against the will of the affected population.

3. reunification movement in the former GDR

The events that led to the disempowerment of the GDR regime and ultimately to reunification are assumed to be known here. Therefore, this example will only be mentioned here and not elaborated on further. In this case, the non-violent "We are the people" movement in the former GDR is particularly noteworthy.

One decisive factor in the success of the fall of communism was that both "the people" and prudent (or impressed or even intimidated by the people?) forces within the GDR initially knew how to avoid a decisive struggle conducted with the utmost use of force. Once this had been achieved, innovations that had originally been tried and tested elsewhere, e.g. in Poland, such as "round tables", came into play, where methods of a smooth transfer of power were successfully practiced while saving face for the losers.

Concluding remarks

The question is, however, whether the reunified Germany should not derive from these experiences of non-violent conflict resolution an obligation for itself to develop a comprehensive non-violent policy both internally and externally at the level of "high politics".

Sources:

[1] "Bus Boycott in Alabama" from America's Story from America's Library, The Library of Congress, http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/king/aa_king_bus1.html; MARTIN LUTHER KING,JR, The Montgomery Bus Boycott, >http//www.sparknotes.com/biography/mlk/section3.rhtml<

[ 2] quoted from Egetenmeier,Ulrike: Gewaltfreier Widerstand. An alternative way to settle the Israel-Palestine conflict 03/05 trend onlinezeitung, >http//www.trend.infopartisan.net/trd0305/t239305.html<

[3] It is known that Rosa Parks had not planned her resistance for that day. It apparently happened spontaneously as a reaction to the concentration of humiliations suffered by herself and observed in fellow sufferers.

[4] Henry David Thoreau: On the Duty of Disobedience to the State. Diogenes Verlag. Zurich 1973.

[5] Ibid, op. cit.

[6] I owe the reference to the full meaning of Sathiagraha to a conversation with the peace researcher and Gandhi expert Wolfgang Sternstein; see also the "GANDHI Ausgewählte(n) Werke in 5 Bänden" translated from English by him and Brigitte Luchesi and Sternstein's afterword p.352 ff. in volume 2 of this Gandhi edition published by Wallstein-Verlag in 2011.

[7] From the letter to P.K. Rao, Servants of India Society, September 10, 1935, quoted from Louis Fischer: The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, London , Harper Collins, 1997, pp. 87-88.

[8] Gandhi, M.K.: Requisite Qualifications, in Harijan, March 25, 1939.

[9]Ulfrid Kleinert (ed.) Gewaltfrei widerstehen. Brokdorf-Protokolle gegen Schlagstöcke und Steine,Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg. July 1981, p. 13.

[10] Annika Müller, Gewaltfreier Widerstand in Palästina, Friedensforum 2009-4, >http://www.friedenskooperative.de/ff/ff09/4-72.htm<; see also footnote 2.

[11] Roland Vogt: After 17 years of resistance: FREIeHEIDe kippt Bombodrom- Erfahrungen aus dem Kampf gegen die Nutzung der Kyritz-Ruppiner Heide als Luft-Boden-Schießplatz der Bundeswehr, FORUM PAZIFISMUS, 3/2009, 3-11.