Sunday, June 14, 2009

Massacres Don't Work for Long

It seems rare enough that unarmed demonstrators are fired upon by police/national guard/soldiers. And it is frequent that there are agents provocateurs. It is also common for governments to bring in rural/poor/less educated militia members from distant provinces or different ethnic groups. The conscript Army in Egypt in Jan/Feb could not be reliably counted upon to fire upon demonstrators.



Clubbed, yes; fired upon, rare enough so that I could name a few prominent ones:
None of these are forgotten or swept under the rug. That I can name them years later proves that. As do the wikipedia articles & youtube films. You might have seen some of the fictional Hollywood portrayals above.
* The Greensboro demonstrators were shot by the Klan, but acquitted. The subsequent rift led to a Truth and Reconciliation process.

**Nothing more after this**

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://bigthink.com/book-think/shelley-in-egypt-how-a-british-poem-inspired-the-arab-spring

Smith Mill Creek Notes said...

Massacre of Mueda, Mozambique

On 16 June 1960, Makonde nationalists organized a demonstration in front of the Mueda District headquarters on the Mueda town square demanding independence from Portugal, apparently the district administrator had invited them to present their grievances. The administrator ordered the leaders arrested, and the crowd protested.

The Portuguese administrator ordered his pre-assembled troops to fire on the crowd, and then many more were thrown to their death into a ravine. The number of dead is in dispute.

However, resentment generated by these events led ultimately to independentist guerrilla FRELIMO gaining needed momentum in the outset of the Mozambican War of Independence (1964–1975).[6]The site of the massacre is marked by a commemorative statue.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueda#Massacre_of_Mueda