No. 230 Street, Shrine, Square and Soccer Pitch: Comparative Protest Spaces in Asia and the Middle East Teresita Cruz-Del Rosari
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The RSIS Working Paper series presents papers in a preliminary form and serves to stimulate comment and discussion. The views expressed are entirely the author’s own and not that of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. If you have any comments, please send them to the following email address: [email protected]. Unsubscribing If you no longer want to receive RSIS Working Papers, please click on “Unsubscribe.” to be removed from the list. No. 230 Street, Shrine, Square and Soccer Pitch: Comparative Protest Spaces in Asia and the Middle East Teresita Cruz-del Rosario and James M. Dorsey S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Singapore 8 November 2011 About RSIS The S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) was established in January 2007 as an autonomous School within the Nanyang Technological University. Known earlier as the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies when it was established in July 1996, RSIS’ mission is to be a leading research and graduate teaching institution in strategic and international affairs in the Asia Pacific. To accomplish this mission, it will: Provide a rigorous professional graduate education with a strong practical emphasis, Conduct policy-relevant research in defence, national security, international relations, strategic studies and diplomacy, Foster a global network of like-minded professional schools. GRADUATE EDUCATION IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS RSIS offers a challenging graduate education in international affairs, taught by an international faculty of leading thinkers and practitioners. The Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree programmes in Strategic Studies, International Relations and International Political Economy are distinguished by their focus on the Asia Pacific, the professional practice of international affairs, and the cultivation of academic depth. Thus far, students from more than 50 countries have successfully completed one of these programmes. In 2010, a Double Masters Programme with Warwick University was also launched, with students required to spend the first year at Warwick and the second year at RSIS. A small but select Ph.D. programme caters to advanced students who are supervised by faculty members with matching interests. RESEARCH Research takes place within RSIS’ six components: the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS, 1996), the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR, 2004), the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS, 2006), the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (Centre for NTS Studies, 2008); the Temasek Foundation Centre for Trade & Negotiations (TFCTN, 2008); and the recently established Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS, 2011). The focus of research is on issues relating to the security and stability of the Asia Pacific region and their implications for Singapore and other countries in the region. The school has four professorships that bring distinguished scholars and practitioners to teach and to conduct research at the school. They are the S. Rajaratnam Professorship in Strategic Studies, the Ngee Ann Kongsi Professorship in International Relations, the NTUC Professorship in International Economic Relations and the Bakrie Professorship in Southeast Asia Policy. i INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION Collaboration with other professional schools of international affairs to form a global network of excellence is a RSIS priority. RSIS maintains links with other like- minded schools so as to enrich its research and teaching activities as well as adopt the best practices of successful schools. ii Abstract Shrines, squares and soccer stadiums have provided the settings for anti-government protests and people power in Southeast Asia and the Middle East in recent decades. At times used for mass detentions and torture of regime opponents by the security forces in the Middle East and North Africa, soccer stadiums became battlefields of resistance by soccer fans against autocratic rulers as the fans became politicized, clashing with security forces and increasingly using matches to shout anti-government slogans. The authors project those spaces as venues of political entitlement. They enabled protestors to overcome fear in confronting the regime in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Benghazi and elsewhere. They also generated a sense of entitlement and demands for far-reaching reforms in post-revolution Egypt and other North African and Middle Eastern countries. ************************** Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario is a Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer. iii Street, Shrine, Square and Soccer Pitch: Comparative Protest Spaces 1 in Asia and the Middle East In Manila, a shrine to the Virgin Mary at a parking lot on EDSA, the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, symbolizes Filipino people power. It lies at the intersection of Ortigas Avenue, the main thoroughfare that cuts across the upper and middle class commercial and residential areas of San Juan and Pasig near the Asian Development Bank. EDSA is Manila’s main thoroughfare, a 26-kilometer stretch of asphalt and concrete that traverses the city’s eight municipalities from Caloocan City in the north to Pasay City in the south. It is no coincidence that the shrine rose at this particular intersection as a site for secular pilgrims in search of a home for their moral vision. Thousands of miles to the west from where the ancestors of the Arab community in the Philippines and South-east Asia set sail, soccer stadiums symbolise the battle in the Middle East and North Africa for political freedom, economic opportunity, ethnic, religious and national identity, and gender rights. The soccer pitch constituted a world in which the game was played as much off as on the pitch. Until the eruption of the Arab revolt in December 2010, alongside the mosque, the stadium was the only alternative public space available for the venting of pent-up anger and frustration against military and security force-dominated regimes. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant soccer fans prepared for a day in which their organization, militancy and street battle experience would serve them in the final showdown with autocratic rulers bent on clinging to power. Soccer had its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militant enthusiasts and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. The soccer match offered the disenfranchised 1Paper presented at the first workshop on Asia’s Civil Spheres: New Media, Urban Public Space, Social Movements. Asian Research Institute. National University of Singapore, 29-30 September 2011. 1 a voice in an environment of forced silence and official misrepresentation, challenged the political and social boundaries set by authoritarian regimes and thrived on goal posts enlarged by globalization. Non-violent revolts such as those in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Syria and Morocco have and are changing the political landscape in emerging nations. Protesters transform public spaces, or what Harry Sewell calls “spatial agency,” from constrained physical landscapes into venues of people power. The revolts in Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Cairo, Tunis, Manama, Sanaa, Amman, Damascus and Casablanca turned streets, pedestrian corridors, avenues, and roundabouts into stages for uninhibited political expression. Many of these venues have acquired the aura of a holy ground, a pilgrimage site where protestors seek redemption and deliverance from various forms of social and political injustice. In this essay, the authors compare the various protest spaces in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Whether street, square or soccer pitch, these sites have created the political architecture for collective enactment as protestors across both regions turn the constraints of a built-up environment to their political advantage in a unique act of shared creativity aimed at advancing the social and political struggle. In doing so, protestors refashion political meanings and reconstruct and renovate physical spaces. They convert them into battlefields over competing visions of the future of a country or region with demands for greater transparency, accountability, accommodation and tolerance. They turn them into venues that give a voice to the disenfranchised and provide a unique platform for building bridges across gaping divides. The authors project EDSA and the soccer stadium as venues of political enactment. Both became over a matter of years the stages for political expression in an environment of repression and autocratic rule. They employ Sewell’s (2001) notions of “spatial structure” and “spatial agency” that are based on Zhao Lee’s (1998, in Aminzade, 2001: 72) description of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square as the ideal ecology for a student protest to explore EDSA and the soccer stadium as perfect settings for popular uprisings. Shrine connotes a demarcation in people’s minds. For Filipinos, Edsa is a sort of political Promised Land perceived in terms of time, place, and 2 sentiment. For Middle Easteners and North Africans, the soccer stadium represents the reclamation of dignity and the assertion of identity in a show of strength and force bolstered by numbers.