Roses, cedars and orange ribbons

"Once you're an activist, the thing you love so much is to see another activist achieving something, reaching his goal, breaking his handcuffs and running for his freedom."

They're young, they're bright and well educated, they speak English and many have experience in bringing down dictators without using violence. Recently, a group of young activists from Eastern Europe and Central Asia got together to seal an alliance. Curious to observe them at work, I decided to accept the invitation to attend their "festival of activism" in Albania.

Click to listen to the programme

There were two "clans": retired activists from Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Lebanon with successful revolutions behind them, and those who haven't (yet). Among the latter group were activists from Belarus and Azerbaijan, and a student from Uzbekistan who wished not to be identified.

Common resolve
What they all share is their drive as well as an impatient yearning for democracy and familiarity with modern tools of non-violent resistance. After the bloodless revolution that brought down Slobodan Milosevic in 2005, activists from Serbia's Otpor! youth movement started transferring their skills to peer organisations in Eastern Europe, through informal contact, but also through formal training sessions, largely supported and financed by Western governments, NGOs and private foundations. [links below] The wave has now reached Central Asia and the Middle East.

Saad Gharzeddine

"What we achieved in these four months was something that people couldn't do for over 30 years," says Saad Gharzeddine, who's with the PoF movement, which helped drive the Syrians out of Lebanon.

"We had people from Otpor! advising us, coming over many times telling us 'Watch out guys for this, we were there, we made this mistake', for example, about how to organise a press conference or how to deal with members who might be tempted to get violent."

Principles and pragmatism
Non-violence is a sacred principle. Ivan Marovic, one of the Otpor! veterans who was in Beirut to support the Lebanese activists: "If police don't feel threatened, it will be hard for them to attack."

It's a pragmatic approach. "We know that non-violence leads to successful change. In all these countries where non-violent change took place, democracy is much more stable than when it's a result of violent change or a coup d'état or liberation war."

"Dictators or whatever you call them are much weaker than we usually think!"  The trick is to weaken their pillars of support and win over the army, the police, the security agencies, the bureaucracy, etc.

Peaceful protest rally in Azerbaijan on 18 June 2005

Gene Sharp
Most of these activists are familiar with the writings of Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institution, an American theorist of non-violent resistance. Available in 27 languages, his books were recently translated and distributed by movements in Ukraine, Belarus and Azerbaijan.

Joerg Forbrig

But personal contact with experienced activists sharing the same cultural background is essential. "Increasingly in the last years, there has been an East-East transfer of expertise", says Joerg Forbrig from the German Marshall Fund, which supports pro -democracy initiatives in the region.

"In Central and Eastern Europe, people have seen a lot of western experts come in and tell the locals how to do it. The locals here are a little tired of that and now give more legitimacy to people from the region who have led such a campaign successfully."
 
The need to unite
In Belarus, the Zubr pro-democracy movement  has yet to bring down the authoritarian regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko. Zubr activist Aleksandr Otroshchenko: "I'm very discouraged when so-called adult opposition leaders can't unite and act together because of ambitions." Youths may be the catalysts behind revolutions, but they don't bring about revolutions single-handedly. Opposition parties need to be united.

Aleksandr Otroshchenko

Activists may not be the only ones to draw lessons from recent democratic revolutions. "I know that Belarus will join the EU and will be free but I'm not sure what price will be paid for our victory, because I'm sure that President Lukashenko will order his troops to shoot on demonstrators. He doesn't care how many people will die because he wants to remain in power. The question is whether the troops will obey his order."

Otroshchenko can count on the support of his peers to continue the struggle. For after three days of intense discussions and partying, the young non-violent activists pledged to work "all for one and one for all".

© Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, all rights reserved