2019 will no doubt be remembered as a year of protests. The first broke out in Hungary over a bill that would allow employers to require employees to work overtime. Not long after that, the Yellow Vest protests started in France, and caught up Belgium, the Netherlands, Serbia, Poland, Italy, and Sweden in their wake. Shortly thereafter, similar protests erupted in Israel, too.
Recently, it seems as if those protests have been making waves in the rest of the world. The end of September saw student demonstrations in Indonesia, in opposition to new draconian legislation that would have curtailed the authorities of the country's anti-corruption council, as well as against bills that would criminalize sex before marriage and insulting the president.
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In Iraq, violent protests have been going on for nearly a month over the government's failure to rein in unemployment and improve public services. The Iraqis are also protesting government corruption. In Lebanon, the last two weeks have seen colorful demonstrations with slogans opposing planned new taxes, including one on the use of the WhatsApp messaging app.
In Hong Kong, the violent protests that started back in June against an extradition law and are now demanding that the Chinese government stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs, refuse to be quashed.
The protests haven't skipped Latin America: at the start of October, Ecuador saw the start of an uprising against President Lenin Moreno's decision to cut back on fuel subsidies. Two weeks later, riots began in Chile in response to increased metro fares, growing inequality, and wage freezes. Last weekend, about a million protesters took to the streets of Santiago. In neighboring Bolivia, tens of thousands gathered to cry election fraud in the re-election of President Evo Morales. To the north, in Peru, miners have been protesting for over a month.
Smaller-scale protests are still ongoing in the Netherlands, Germany, and France against those government's policies on climate change.
We can see the power of the protests in how the leaders of developing countries respond to them: In Algeria, the protests led to the resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika; in Sudan, Chile, and Ecuador states of emergency were declared; and in Hong Kong China – along with violent attempts to silence the protest – is also running a widespread disinformation campaign that is designed to delegitimize the protests.
Supposedly, it should be difficult to find similarities in protests in countries that are so different from each other, especially given that most of the protest movements have no official leadership. We can attribute their rapid spread to the digital age, which as early as 2011 led to the Arab Spring, which then spread westward. But given that the protests of 2019 are not only continuing but also growing, especially in developing and Arab nations, we cannot ignore a clear pattern – that the young generation is in despair over their economic situation and sick of corruption at the government level. Aside from a desire to improve their quality of life, we can see that the protesters are also seeking deeper change and want liberal democracies.
We can see this not only in the fact that the strongest demonstrations are happening in countries that are ranked low on the Freedom House scale of freedom, as well as in the protesters' demand for less government intervention in their lives and opposition to laws that trample their basic human rights. We can see it especially in the fact that many of the protests go on even after they have achieved their initial goals. A change to the men in power isn't enough for the protesters, who realize that switching out personalities will not secure long-term change. They want a change to the regimes themselves. After a month of protests, Algerians aren't satisfied to see the elderly and corrupt President Bouteflika resign – they want to oust the commander of the army, who wants to replace him.
Similarly, we can assume that the announcements by the prime ministers of Iraq and Lebanon that they are resigning will not satisfy the protesters, and might even spur them on. Despite assessments that this is a passing phase, it appears as if the worldwide wave of popular protests is here to stay.
