Audio cassettes played a role in the Iranian revolution of 1978-79. The Shah of Iran began his rule in 1953. His regime seemed invincible. With enormous oil revenues, he created a massive military machine. Secret police terrorized the population through torture and killings. The regime was actively supported by the United States government and was not opposed by the governments of Israel, the Soviet Union or most Arab countries. This apparently overwhelmingly powerful government was brought down by mass nonviolent action, triggered by religious opponents. The speeches of Ayatollah Khomeini, in exile, were circulated on cassette tapes. Funerals, held forty days after deaths, became protests. When police opened fire and killed mourners, further funerals were held. Opponents burned pictures of the Shah in front of spy cameras of the secret police. Tens of thousands of nonviolent demonstrators were shot dead by troops. Eventually sections of the military defected, and the regime quickly collapsed.[12] (It should be said that although the Shah’s regime was toppled largely by nonviolent methods, the successor theocratic regime led by Khomeini was also highly repressive.)
In 1991, a video cassette, combined with television, helped expose Indonesian atrocities in East Timor. The former Portuguese colony of East Timor was invaded and occupied by the Indonesian military regime in 1975. There was continued resistance to the occupiers, both nonviolent civilian resistance and an armed guerrilla struggle. Indonesian troops were highly brutal. As well as torture and killings of civilians, the search and destroy missions against the guerrillas led to widespread starvation. The United Nations condemned the invasion and occupation, but never took any action against them.
Indonesian authorities controlled almost all communication channels. News of resistance and atrocities against the civilian population only reached the outside world via travelers or emigrés. A short-wave transmitter in northern Australia, used to communicate with the East Timorese guerrillas, was shut down by the Australian government.
In November 1991, foreign journalists observed a massacre of hundreds of East Timorese engaged in a nonviolent protest in Dili, the capital of East Timor. One of the journalists, British film-maker Max Stahl, recorded the events on videotape, which was smuggled out of the country. This documentation caused an international scandal. Although there had been many previous massacres witnessed by East Timorese who later left the country, these did not lead to much publicity, partly because of categorical denials by Indonesian authorities. It was the testimony of foreign, independent journalists and of videotape which turned the 1991 Dili massacre into a public relations disaster for the Indonesian occupiers.[13]
Newspapers
Large daily newspapers are enormously influential. Authoritarian governments normally control newspapers directly or subject them to censorship. This is illustrated by the case of the Emergency in India. The Indian government led by Indira Gandhi was widely seen as corrupt and unresponsive. A mass movement developed around the popular figure of Jayaprakesh Narayan, and this appeared to provide a political threat to the government. On 26 June 1975, Indira Gandhi declared an Emergency. Thousands of people were imprisoned, parliament was muzzled, and the press was censored. For the first few days, the electricity supply to key newspapers was cut off. Financial pressures were applied to those that refused to toe the government’s line.
Control of information was a key feature of the Emergency. There was enormous resistance to the government, but groups in different parts of the country knew little of each other. Major demonstrations, with up to half a million people, were not reported and hence unknown elsewhere. Some newspapers capitulated quickly to the censorship requirements, whereas others resisted in various ways. The international press was a key force of opposition; correspondents found innovative ways of getting around censorship. When foreign dignitaries refused to visit India, this hurt the regime; visits by British political figures Margaret Thatcher and Michael Foot were used for propaganda purposes by the regime.
In 1977, Mrs Gandhi called elections, perhaps believing her own government’s censorship-created propaganda about her support. In spite of continued (though relaxed) censorship, the opposition Janata Party was elected. Thus the Emergency came to an end.[14]
Because large newspapers are so easily controlled by a few owners and editors, they are not a good communication medium for a social defence system. In the long term, it would be better to aim at systems of dispersed publication. For example, wire service stories might be directly received, at low cost, in numerous small communities. There, any interested person could select a bundle of stories, compile and edit them if necessary, and make them available to others — in printed or electronic form. Thus there might be many thousands of “editors” from whom a person could select. As well, the skills required would be made straightforward enough so that new people could step in without too much trouble. With such a system, an aggressor could not easily take over the press. It is also necessary for wire services to be diversified. At the moment, four international services provide most stories published by the western press. If, instead, there were thousands of small international services, control over the orientation of stories, by whatever means, would be much more difficult.
However, large newspapers will not be abandoned or replaced easily or quickly, so in the meantime it would be useful to have ways to resist aggressors. Printing presses could be designed so that they could be shut down by operators in the face of a takeover and so that a special symbol is printed on every page whenever the press is used against the wishes of the editors and printers. Wire service terminals could be designed so that messages go automatically to a range of other locations.
Leaflets and the Underground Press
It is easy for an aggressor to take over a few large printing presses, because only a few people are required at crucial locations in the process. By contrast, small local means for printing leaflets, posters and newsletters are difficult to control. Anyone with a microcomputer and printer can produce high-quality leaflets quickly and easily. The photocopier is even more powerful. A handwritten notice can be reproduced in the hundreds or thousands.
The power of dissident publications in the resistance to the Nazis in occupied Europe is described by Jacques Semelin:
The central role of the underground press in the general development of institutional resistance must be emphasized. The existence of the underground press must not be considered as just one element among others in resisting Nazism. It does not belong in the same category as sabotage, intelligence activities, protest marches, and so on; nor was the underground press a simple instrument of counter-propaganda in the psychological war carried on by rival powers. This press was the central axis around which internal resistance movements could organize and develop. It was as if the resistance needed an initial ideological basis in order to develop combat structures. Early resisters therefore distributed pamphlets, bulletins, and various newspapers to formulate the values for which they were fighting Nazism. The underground press operated out of conviction rather than from the desire to disseminate information. Its function was not only to address those whom it wanted to rally to its cause, but even more to convince and assert a collective self on the basis of which the new ideological order — that of the occupation — could be rejected.[15]
12.
David H. Albert (ed.),
13.
Andrew McMillan,
14.
Michael Henderson,
15.
Jacques Semelin,