On October 15, 2012
“Cannon to right of them; cannon to left of them… Into the valley of Death floated the six hundred.”*
*With apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who wrote “The Charge of the Light Brigade” in 1854.
One fine day this summer, the sky above Minsk, in the former Soviet republic
The arsenal of freedom includes laughter! Illustration © 2012 by Linda Arkelian.
of Belarus, was filled with aerial invaders intent on attacking the despotic regime of Alexander Lukashenko. Scores of paratroops descended on the city bearing messages in support of free speech. Unarmed, save for the pointed barbs of the words printed on the placards they carried, these airborne protestors proved that no tyrant is too powerful or too feared to be denounced as an enemy of freedom. It was done with panache, and it was done with humor: For the paratroops were small teddy bears, transported across international boundaries by a single-engine airplane. The great teddy bear escapade was the brainchild of two Swedish advertising executives, Tomas Mazetti and Hannah Frey. Correctly reasoning that a tyrant’s power is founded in its appearance of strength, ruthlessness, and the ability to crush dissent, these creative protestors concluded that the best way to undermine a dictator is to make him an object of laughter. The tyrant can muster brute force; the dissenter need only muster the courage and resolve to speak truth to power to expose its illegitimacy. The airborne assault on the undeserved dignity of the tyrant of Belarus was a daring one: Mazetti and Frey risked interception (or worse) by the country’s air defenses. And their aim of embarrassing Lukashenko was clearly successful: He pulled his embassy staff out of Sweden and expelled Swedish diplomats from Belarus in angry reaction to the furry paratroops. Best of all, this audacious example of how to stage a peaceful invasion, and thereby discomfit a tyrant, is a sterling template for creative protest in action. It’s an example the rest of us should emulate whenever and wherever we encounter injustice, oppression, or the abuse of human rights.
Text © October 2012 by John Arkelian.
Illustration © 2012 by Linda Arkelian.