Another one, in Bangladesh in 1990, caused dictator Muhammad Ershad to abdicate and democracy to be restored. But the most incredible instances have taken place in the recent past. An amazingly brave nonviolent movement occurred in Pakistan. It was precipitated by military ruler Pervez Musharraf’s wanton dismissal in 2007 of the Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. In response, lawyers’ groups and other segments of Pakistani civil society mounted a sustained peaceful agitation.
The results were impressive, even in the face of the murders of dozens of protesters by Musharraf’s allies (in the city of Karachi) and a massive bomb blast at a site where Chaudhry was due to give a speech. Musharraf was initially forced to accept a Supreme Court’s ruling when it reinstated Chaudhry as the chief justice but then decided to dig in and crack down. He declared emergency rule and arrested thousands of lawyers, judges, and their allies in civil society. In fact, he reserved a fury for them that he didn’t show toward religious fundamentalist parties, subjecting the lawyers to massive detentions, beatings, and teargassing.
But domestic and international pressure forced Musharraf to hold elections. The results vindicated the protesters, with Musharraf’s party being decimated. The game was up. Musharraf held on to the presidency for a few more months but eventually gave up the ghost in August 2008 and fled to England. Democracy was restored, and the protesters triumphed. When Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, procrastinated on restoring some of the top judges, the lawyers came out again in force in early 2009 and forced him to reinstall them. Such a victory, twice over, may be unprecedented in recent times.
And Pakistan is not the only Muslim country even in South Asia to have an inspirational ending in the past few years. In late 2008, in a little-known instance, the people of the small Indian Ocean island nation of Maldives brought down a tyrant, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, after 30 years of his autocratic rule, the longest in Asia at that point in time. Mass peaceful mobilization by the opposition candidate, former political prisoner Mohamed Nasheed, helped ensure that Gayoom finally conceded when he lost the presidential election to Nasheed in October. Gayoom was no slouch in the repression department. Demonstrators were badly beaten by the police, and critics were sentenced to long years in prison. Nasheed himself was brutally tortured before being forced into exile.
Asia, Asia Minor and Anatolia: Origin of Turk Neighbors
