Violent Ending
Occasional mass demonstrations were organized in front of government buildings. The organizers claimed a strategy of non-violent resistance but failed to sustain it. On 9 March 2001, the birthday of Taras Shevchenko, there were few clashes between protesters and riot police, and dozens were injured: arguably the most violent and populous riots in Ukraine's modern history. Both sides of the incident blamed the other. Protest leaders argued that police provoked the last and most violent clash near the presidential palace, by blocking a procession and infiltrating it with provocateurs. Indeed, militarized right-wing extremists led the fight. In response, authorities conducted mass arrests in the city, focussing on Ukrainian-speaking youth. Several opposition MPs took advantage of their parliamentary immunity by storming police stations and cars in efforts to release the apprehended.
The public impression of the incident led to a gradual decrease of support for the campaign. Soon, it was declared finished. A group of active participants of the March 9 clashes was convicted and imprisoned.
Read more about this topic: Ukraine Without Kuchma
Famous quotes containing the word violent:
“The violent illiteracies of the graffiti, the clenched silence of the adolescent, the nonsense cries from the stage-happening, are resolutely strategic. The insurgent and the freak-out have broken off discourse with a cultural system which they despise as a cruel, antiquated fraud. They will not bandy words with it. Accept, even momentarily, the conventions of literate linguistic exchange, and you are caught in the net of the old values, of the grammars that can condescend or enslave.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“...Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non- violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps—and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities.... The acceptance of our condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children [ellipses in source].”
—Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965)