Endoh’s Dungeon

When I said “protest”, I actually meant physical planting of an individual or a group of like-minded people at a certain venue for the causes they are standing up for. This has been a question on my mind for a long time, because protesting in such a manner seemed like an old-fashioned move to get a message across. So how effective is protesting seriously?

The most recent protests that I can bring upon this post, is the worldwide protest against China and the price hike protest in Indonesia. Both, contained a certain element of violence in the process, which kinda swayed my sympathy towards China even though I do not agree with their policies towards Tibet. Whether the violence was planned, or a natural degrading of the cause to riots, I cannot say for sure.

What intrigued me into such a thought, mainly resided in the observation that protests around the world ripped a very grim success rate. There are hundreds of protests every year, if not thousands, but how have these protests change governmental or corporate policies? The statistics is low, because giving in to protests (especially for Governments) is regarded as a sign of weakness in the body. Hence, the likelihood of protests creating real changes in all the policies we see is miserably low as well.

I’m not about to say protests are totally useless. My feel is that protests, do come in useful only to a certain extent. If we are to take a conscious look at all the protests around us, they hardly make things better but worsen the situation instead. If it was meant to pressure a certain body into making changes or demolishing a policy, all the more the policies will be upheld. But say, if protests are made in the context of creating awareness of an issue, it may come in handy.

In Singapore, we have seen how opposition leader Chee Soon Juan had been shut down repeatedly for his protests. There’s also the figurines protest against Odex, which commenced legal actions on illegal downloaders. Last year, we have also seen an episode of anti-Malaysia protest when a karate coach was allegedly assaulted by Malaysia’s plain clothes police officers.

With that, I had to concur with the fact that whatever changes we hope to bring about with protests is no longer valid. No doubt protests is a starting point of a long journey, the preferred changes are still kept to the table. Isn’t protesting such a waste of time then? Or perhaps, is protesting the best option available?

Judging by how numerous protests often turned out to be violent affairs, even some of us who are ready to chip in our fair share are looking at protests with disgust. Thankfully, we have not seen any bloodshed in Singapore’s protests unlike in our earlier days. Yet, by looking at various protests, can we say it is not possible? If gone uncontrolled, yes indeed, we will see people drawing blood from one another. It’s only a matter of time when we citizens are tearing ourselves apart. That’s not very nice and is that what we hope to see?

Also, the true agenda of the protest organizer is usually unclear. How do we determine the protest advocates are truly standing up for the cause and not conveniently using the issue at hand as a diversion for something else? In truth, it’s very hard for us to tell. In fact if we look around us, we do have people who support protests not in credit to the real underlying cause but solely because of displeasure towards our bureaucratic Government or certain organizations. While pressing for the intended targets to be more transparent and honest, some protesters don’t seemed to be doing what they preached either.

Given the poor results of protests from anti-war propagandas in US to anti-Pope protests in Britain and thousands more around the world, I had to reasonably discount protests as “a useful tool” in campaigning against a body. There are bodies that readily submit to the pressure of protests, but they are still quite rare to come by.

What’s even more ridiculous in my views of protests is, most protests are proclaimed to be “peaceful” when evidences tell us violence is a part of the picture. The more we allow violence into protests, the more discrediting of protests we are inducing. Nobody discredit the protests, but the protesters themselves. How ironical? It isn’t a game of “having the guts” to do something different. Put your “guts” to better use when the super-powers are invading us. Let’s see how much “guts” you have when the day comes.

Am I likely to join a protest? I dare say, NO. I would prefer to look at other avenues that possess higher chances of success than that 5 minutes of fame.

And please, protesting is nothing about freedom of speech.