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What would MLK say?

The rash of suicides and attempted suicides associated with popular rebellions in Tunisia, Algeria and now Egypt naturally raises the question, on Martin Luther King Day:  is suicide a useful, effective or legitimate tactic against autocratic regimes?

Let’s admit right off that in one sense it is useful:  self immolation attracts a lot of attention today, as it did decades ago during the Vietnam war.  The press seems barely able to get its fill of such stories, and if there are photographs in addition you can be sure they will run on the front page in the West.  Self immolation is treated as the ultimate testimonial to how desperate people are.  I suppose that makes it effective as well.  These protests are largely indigenous, but you can be sure that Western attention to them will still be an important factor in how the Arab regimes react.  And what are you going to do to someone who has already doused himself in gasoline and tried to light it afire?

I am not a King scholar, and the day is not long enough yet for me to have checked out his writings carefully on this subject.  But I grew up with MLK’s words ringing in my ears from well before attending the March on Washington in 1963.  This was a man whose opposition to violence and respect for human life would not permit him to support suicide of any type to prove a point.  Yes, he expected himself and his supporters to run gigantic risks and to suffer brutality at the hands of police and thugs.  But this was to bear witness, to confront oppression with human dignity, not to get killed.

This is an important message just now, as the demonstrations in several countries seem to be deteriorating into street brawls and looting.  If something good is to come of the sacrifices people are making, nonviolence and dignity–including respect for property–are vital.  If the regimes can credibly call the demonstrators criminals, decent people will hesitate to join them and the security forces will feel free to crack down.

Nonviolence for Martin Luther King was a moral as well as a practical imperative.  It was a high calling, one that really did appear to give his movement divine blessings, as it did Gandhi’s.  But not everyone can adhere to that calling.  I admit to having seen things in this world that merit a violent response.  The trouble is that violence, even violence against oneself, begets more violence.  What the demonstrations need now is MLK’s recipe of nonviolence and respect for human dignity.  The demonstrators should not be attacking the security forces but inviting the security forces to their side, as they did in the days leading up to President Ben Ali’s flight.  Self immolation will not be effective in that sense.

I have just returned this morning from Baghdad.  I can only wonder what might have happened there had demonstrations of the sort now seen in North Africa broken out against Saddam Hussein.  It would have been bloody and nasty, but could it have been as bloody and nasty as these last eight years?  I played a role in advocating the support for the Serbian opposition that brought down Slobodan Milosevic just a few years before the American invasion of Iraq.  There is no question but that Serbia is better off for having dealt with its own autocracy by largely nonviolent means.

That is what I might wish for our North African friends on Martin Luther King day:  disciplined nonviolence and respect for human dignity have the best chance of winning the day and bringing about regimes that in turn will respect human dignity and not use violence against their own people.