What is common among Joshua Wong, Akbar Ali al-Kishi and Tef Poe? All three happen to be remarkable activists for social justice and freedom in their respective societies who are shockingly young.
Wong is just 18-years-old and has emerged as the face of the Hong Kong student protest movement that has rocked authoritarian China in the last few months. Al-Kishi is barely 19 and is serving a multiple decades-long prison sentence in Bahrain for organising poor Shia demonstrators against the tyrannical rule of the Sunni monarchy of the House of Khalifa. Poe is 25 and one of the ardent mobilisers of black minorities struggling against institutionalised racism of the police in the disturbed area of Saint Louis, Missouri, US.
Rebuffing stereotypes of youngsters who keep out of trouble, pursue material self-advancement and remain hooked to popular entertainment, extraordinary youthful leaders are coming to the fore to take up arduous responsibilities. They are proving that wisdom, maturity and ability to inspire large masses of people are not the exclusive preserves of middle-aged or elderly persons.
Highly empowered and visionary youth like Wong, al-Kishi and Poe induct themselves into politics early, when they are literally kids, and are hence free from the hindrances and baggage that accompany those who take the plunge into public affairs at a later stage.
The spindly Wong was just 14 when he earned his political baptism by joining a protest movement against the Chinese government’s plans to build a high speed rail network linking Hong Kong to Guangzhou in mainland China, which threatened pollution and exorbitant costs for taxpayers. At 15, Wong launched Scholarism, the student activist network, to oppose the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to introduce propagandistic “moral education” and patriotism in school curricula.
These initial training grounds in rebellion against a repressive power structure offered him crucial insights about the Chinese state, the psychology of police forces in Hong Kong and the mentality of the lay public. Having imbibed the lessons, Wong is today savvier in tactics as he marshals tens of thousands of fellow students confronting armed policemen under the banner of the “Umbrella Revolution”. So spontaneous and formidable are the youth in resisting China’s decision to block public nomination of candidates for the election of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive that pro-democracy political parties and their older members have been pushed aside to play second fiddle.
A stand-out feature of the new politics being ushered in by surprisingly young revolutionaries around the planet is that they break away from vertical institutions and hierarchical modes of expressing dissent and presenting alternatives. Bahrain’s al-Kishi is not a product of pre-existing registered Opposition parties like Al Wefaq or Al Wahdawi. Rather, he is a fresh bundle of energy from grassroots youth associations. At the age of 14, he was first attacked with birdshot by the monarchy’s brutal security forces in 2009, and has since been arrested and tortured repeatedly in 2010, 2012 and 2013.
According to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, he has been spitefully targeted by the Bahraini government as “an act of revenge against people in the opposition group who did not back down”. One of the youngest prisoners of conscience in the world today, his self-abnegating sacrifice is a symbol of Bahrain’s Shia majority’s quest for dignity and equality.
The millennial generation (people born in the 1980s and 1990s) of activists is particularly praiseworthy because they are wedded to non-violence despite being on the receiving end of extremely harsh and draconian treatment from the powers that be. Besides animating marchers on the streets to defy the racist machinery of the Saint Louis police, Tef Poe is an upcoming liberation rapper whose songs and lyrics are filled with ideas for “changing the world” through peaceful politics and advocacy for human rights. His music is driven by a passion “to say the things that everyone else is kind of nervous to say”.
In a soul-stirring essay written in Time as Saint Louis underwent turmoil after heavily militarised policemen killed unarmed teenaged black youth, Poe sent out messages of self-reliance and steely determination: “We are our only allies. We are may be the minority in this country, but vocally, we will be the majority. They cannot kill us all. They cannot throw us all in jail.”
Established African American politicians and leaders from the civil rights era hopped on to the protest bandwagon in Saint Louis, so as not to miss the moment, only after young achievers like Poe lit the fire with the cry: “Our hopes and dreams are not valued or respected. Our worries and concerns often fall upon deaf ears.”
Technological developments have a hand in imbuing progressively younger change agents with the self-belief to improve their circumstances through collective action. In an important book on the role of young people in the Arab Spring upheavals of 2011, Youth and Revolution in Tunisia, anthropologist Alcinda Honwana argues that a “new brand of active citizenship and political participation” has arisen. It mixes time-tested methods like “assembly, consensus and autonomy” with contemporary mediums such as “Facebook, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos, Instagram photographs and electronic messaging.” The limelight that Wong has shone upon dictatorial China is one example of how teenagers are wielding technology to tell the truth and embarrass mighty governments.
We are in the throes of a generational revolution. Gone are the days when the young could be dismissed as callow, apathetic or inexperienced for civic engagement or political praxis. The generational injustices being dished out to the youth unemployment has been maximum for those below the age of 25 and youth have to suffer environmental degradation far longer than the aged are bound to forge ever younger revolutionary leadership.
Twenty-seven per cent of the world’s population is below the age of 15. Don’t dismiss the teenager next door. She may be the harbinger of great transformations.
The writer is a professor and dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs
