Tom Lowe
The news from Switzerland is not good. In case you weren't aware, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is meeting there at the moment and protestors have converged from all over the world to protest the economic policies that are impoverishing most of the population of the world and leading us towards an environmental disaster.
I spent a some time in Switzerland in the '60s and '70s and thought it was a nice, peaceful place. The police seemed to me to be considerably less thuggish than the ones in the German Federal Republic. On Swiss independence day, I listened to fervent patriotic speeches in praise of the freedom that the Swiss enjoyed. It all sounded so good. It reminded me of the speeches I heard in Jackson, Mississippi, in the middle of a segregated society, during the same period.
The events in Davos and Zürich, however, showed that the Swiss police are capable of just as much thuggishness as their German cousins and clearly demonstrate that opposition to the world economic order, no matter how non-violent, will be met by a vicious response from the police, apparently with the blessing of the authorities.
Earlier today in Davos, Switzerland, according to IndyMedia http://davos.indymedia.org/ demonstrators were attacked by police with water cannons. The village of Landquart, about 40 miles from Davos, is completely gridlocked, thousands of protesters who arrived by buses, train, cars, etc., having been attacked and tear-gassed. Protestors returning from Davos to Zürich found their train surrounded at the station with police aiming tear gas rifles directly at them. One demonstrator described the situation as the police going berserk. Even Vendanta Shiva, a prominent environmental activist and feminist, found herself being clubbed by Swiss police in Davos.
This publication has often asked why non-violent protest invariably provokes the authorities to self-defeating violence. Even with a virtual blackout in the mainstream media and the banning by the Swiss of independent media journalists, the news and the pictures coming out of Switzerland clearly discredit the existing regime and make a mockery of their boasts of enjoying a free society. You are free to do what you want to as long as you don't challenge the system.
Non-violence challenges the moral legitimacy of any regime claiming to be democratic but, in reality, is based on force and coercion. There is no greater threat to such a regime. A violent uprising is much easier to deal with, because violence is its favorite, if not its only, tool. Non-violent protest stabs at the heart of its source of power: the ignorance and acquiescence of the people.
In Birmingham, in the '60s, the police used fire hoses, cattle prods and dogs against peaceful protesters. Those scenes, broadcast over television, outraged the nation and led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Last year in Seattle, it was tear gas, rubber bullets and truncheons used against peaceful protesters.
Now in Switzerland, it is again tear gas, water cannons and truncheons and the cops going berserk in Zürich. As the movement for a just economic order gains strength, expect the gloves to come further off. Expect there to be more officially-sanctioned violence against opponents of the World Economic Order. As the regime becomes more fearful, it will become more vicious. Non-violence is too threatening; it cannot be allowed to prevail.