FORMS OF REPRESSION AGAINST RESISTANCE AND HOW EFFECTIVE COUNTERMEASURES CAN BE MOUNTED AGAINST THE DIFFERENT FORM

FORMS OF REPRESSION AGAINST RESISTANCE AND HOW EFFECTIVE COUNTERMEASURES CAN BE MOUNTED AGAINST THE DIFFERENT FORMS. It’s not obvious that every regime that violates the democratic principles, and turns against the will of its people collapses instantly. Even in the face of activists, community organizers, and dissenters campaigning against the perpetration of the regime, some still maintained their grip on power for months, years, and decades. From the analysis of the available cases, among the factors that contribute to the survival of such regimes include repression. Whereas, there is no statistical evidence, repression is a common feature across all oppressive regimes and its believed that it contributes the biggest percentage of the means to maintaining grip on power. Studies on movements and campaigns reveal that a significant number didn’t succeed due to repression that was meted on them. The perpetrators orchestrated both hard and soft repression which involved both visible and invisible actions. this paper groups repression into four categories basing on its impact on individual activist or group of activists and will explore how organizers, and activists can effectively counter it. This paper presents its data mainly collected through observation, individual interviews, secondary data and personal experience. These findings reveal repression in 1) Physical; arbitrary arrests, raids, torture, and killings, 2) Psychological; targeting loved ones, and use of identity, 3) Economic; closure of business, loss of employment, and confiscating property, and 4) social dimension which includes; propaganda, framing, blackmailing among others. Notwithstanding the above, it’s also not true that every regime that subjected its people to repression successfully maintained grip onto power, they eventually fall. Despite the lack of quantitative evidence on the regimes that fell as a result of repression, the available cases reveal that repression triggered a fall of a significant number of oppressors from Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan among others. The findings of this paper reveal that once the activists have clarity in their strategy, craft a proper message and devise tools of propagating their message, there is no doubt that these can counter the oppression and subsequently increase the possibilities of registering success in their campaigns.