Pro-Democracy Movements

It was an iconic moment, captured for the world to see. A man, carrying plastic bags stands in front of a tank, stopping the line of tanks from entering China's Tiananmen Square during the 1989 pro-democracy protests. Eventually, the tanks made it to the square and broke up the protests. An untold number of people were jailed or killed in what was to be known as the "Tiananmen Square Massacre." What happened to this man is unknown.

That was in the day before the ubiquitousness of cameras and drones and social media, however.

Now, images of pro-democracy protest movements are much more available, making it more difficult for oppressive governments to cover up the their responses to these pro-democracy movements.

A "pro-democracy movement" is a protest by the people against the government for the increased ability to participate in that government. Most pro-democracy movements focus on three things:
1) Increase suffrage  2) Increase the transparency of government (that is, to make public all matters of government) 3) to remove oppressive leaders

Since the Tiananmen Square Massacre, there have been other pro-democracy movements against China. China has a one-party system in which the Chinese Communist Party runs all aspects of government and strictly controls the lives of people in China.

Recently, people in Hong Kong have taken to the streets against China. Hong Kong is in a unique situation. For over 100 years, Hong Kong was controlled by Great Britain. In 1999, the city was given back to China and over the years China has slowly stripped away rights that they had under British rule. A law was passed in 2019 called the Fugitive Offenders amendment bill and would force people accused of speaking out against China be sent to China for trial. This is called extradition and people saw it as an attempt to silence dissent, and hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets. Although the protests have been relatively peaceful, they have been met with violence by the China-backed Hong Kong police force.  Images of the protests have been spread through social media. China has also been spreading misinformation about the protests.

In September of 2019, Hong Kong decided to rescind the extradition bill, but the other demands by the protesters have not been met.



Pro-democracy movements have occurred elsewhere as well:

1) In 2018, protests against Omar al-Bashir, the dictator of Sudan, resulted in his resignation.

2) In 2016, protests in Zimbabwe resulted in the ousting of long-time president Robert Mugabe

3) In a series of protests throughout the Middle East starting in 2010 known as the "Arab Spring," pro-democracy movements resulted in regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.


However, the state of democracy in 2019 is somewhat fragile.

Source: Freedomhouse.org https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2018