http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14846311,00.html


Deutsche Welle
February 17, 2011


Serbian non-violence group shares know-how with Egyptian activists
The Egyptian April 6 movement met with activists in Serbia


-Through CANVAS, the non-violent legacy of Otpor lives on and has inspired
revolutionaries in Georgia, Ukraine and now Egypt. They provide guides to
non-violent resistance in multiple languages, and their book "Nonviolent
Struggle - 50 Crucial Points" has been downloaded tens of thousands of times and
was translated into Arabic and Farsi in 2009.


The Egyptian protesters who toppled President Mubarak weren't just inspired by
their Tunisian neighbors: They also got inspiration and advice from the Serbian
youth movement that helped bring down Slobodan Milosevic.

Egyptian protesters ended President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule through
strategic mass mobilization and effective but non-violent resistance. Some of
those activists were inspired by a Serbian group called "Otpor," which means
resistance. Otpor had a significant role in the overthrowing of Slobodan
Milosevic in 2000, and its member have since founded the non-governmental
organization the Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS).

Through CANVAS, the non-violent legacy of Otpor lives on and has inspired
revolutionaries in Georgia, Ukraine and now Egypt. They provide guides to
non-violent resistance in multiple languages, and their book "Nonviolent
Struggle - 50 Crucial Points" has been downloaded tens of thousands of times and
was translated into Arabic and Farsi in 2009.

The Egyptian opposition group the April 6 Youth Movement - named for their 2008
worker strike, which was violently suppressed - met with Otpor activists in
Belgrade. There they gathered the important know-how they then put into action
on January 28 when they peacefully took over Tahrir Square in Cairo, despite
massive efforts by the police to stop them. They even use the same raised fist
logo of Otpor and CANVAS.

A spreading movement?

Former Otpor member Srdjan Milivojevic is now a member of the Democratic Party
in Serbia and told Deutsche Welle he's not surprised that the group's ideas live
on in other revolutions.

"I'm totally convinced that Otpor's core concept, namely the non-violent
struggle against a dictatorship and the non-violent struggle for change under a
non-democratic regime, is exciting to people who yearn for freedom around the
world," he said.

The head of CANVAS and another former Otpor member, Srdja Popovic, said he was
impressed by the Egyptians' "disciplined non-violence."

They denied the regime's hoped for escalation with their pacifism, he said. "The
Egyptian protest movement has shown in an inspiring way that in these Arab
countries there's an enormous potential for resistance that can develop into a
pan-Arab movement," he added.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.indypendent.org/2011/02/16/the-roots-of-egypt%E2%80%99s-pro-democracy\
-movement/


[In the Al Jazeera video Otpor's Srdja Popovic uses the exact expression he was
taught by U.S. Army Colonel Robert Helvey eleven years earlier (see below):
"form of warfare."]


In this great episode of People & Power, Al Jazeera looks at the role that the
April 6 Movement played in getting Egyptians out on the streets and sustaining
the struggle to oust Mubarak. It also highlights the work of our good friend
Srdja Popovic - one of the leaders of Otpor, the youth movement that brought
down Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 - who had helped train the young activists in
nonviolent strategy and tactics.


http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache:ohJqPf0b6kEJ:http://w\
ww.aforcemorepowerful.org/films/bdd/story/otpor/robert-helvey.php+Robert+Helvey&\
ct=clnk


Excerpted from an interview in Belgrade, January 29, 2001

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Robert Helvey was sent by the International Republican
Institute to teach seminars in nonviolent strategy for a group of Otpor students
in the spring of 2000.

-It's a form of warfare. And you've got to think of it in terms of a war.
====================================================================
Stop NATO e-mail list home page with archives and search engine:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages

Stop NATO website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com

To subscribe for individual e-mails or the daily digest, unsubscribe, and
otherwise change subscription status:
stopnato-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
======================================================================