Nonviolent action campaigns have been a part of political
life for millennia. History records many instances of groups
rising to challenge abuses by authorities, demand social
reforms, and protest militarism and discrimination. In recent
years, however, the number of such movements has increased, as
has their success in advancing the cause of human rights and
toppling or dramatically reforming repressive regimes. In the
twentieth century, nonviolence became more of a deliberate
tool for social change, moving from being largely an ad hoc
strategy growing naturally out of religious or ethical
principles to a reflective and, in many ways,
institutionalized method of struggle.
Campaigns to reform discriminatory laws through nonviolent
action—such as the civil rights movements in the United
States—are one example of how human rights have been
advanced through the use of nonviolent action. More
significant, however, has been the remarkable upsurge in
nonviolent insurrections against authoritarian regimes. Many
of the individual revolts have received major media
attention—such as those in China, the Philippines and
Eastern Europe—and certain political consequences of these
largely prodemocracy movements have been analyzed. However,
there has been little recognition of the significance of the
increasing utilization of nonviolent methods to affect change
in nations where guerrilla warfare from below or gradualistic
reform from above were once seen as the only alternatives.
Despite the diffusion of nonviolence as a conscious strategy
through movements around the world in recent decades, little
is understood about how or why nonviolence works as a
technique for securing social change. "Nonviolence"
is not even a category in the mainstream academic lexicon.
Primarily nonviolent "people power" movements
have led to the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in nearly
two dozen countries over the past two decades, forced
substantial reforms in even more, and seriously challenged
repressive or unjust systems in still others. These nonviolent
insurrections are distinguished from armed struggles in that
they are carried out by organized individuals who, either
consciously or by necessity, eschew the use of weapons of
modern warfare.1 Nonviolent activists also distinguish
themselves from participants in more conventional political
movements by using tactics outside the normal political
process, including strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations,
contestation of public space, tax refusal, destruction of
symbols of government authority (such as official
identification cards), refusal to obey official orders (such
as curfew restrictions), and the creation of alternative
institutions for recognizing political legitimacy and
fostering social organization.
Although nonviolent conflict shares much with its violent
counterpart, differences between the two have an important
impact on both the means and consequences of a conflict. The
theoretical assumptions underlying nonviolent struggle are
significant and provide a challenge to a great deal of
conventional thinking in the social sciences. The relative
success of so many nonviolent social movements implies, as
Gene Sharp noted, that political power is ultimately
"fragile because it depends on many groups for
reinforcement of its power sources" (Sharp 1973, I: 8).
Because "nonviolent action cuts off sources of [the
regime's] power rather than simply combating the final power
products of these sources," it poses a much more severe
threat to a regime's authority than does armed rebellion (III:
454). Furthermore, the success of nonviolent movements implies
that power is pluralistic; that a ruler's power is determined
by the degree to which subjects chose to follow orders. To the
extent this is true, it is also true that even the most
oppressive regime rules, to some degree, by consent. This
trend indicates that revolutions/revolts grow out of the
disintegration of concert, not simply the agitation of armed
rebels.
However, some scholars familiar with civil resistance in
authoritarian settings have argued that Sharp's theory of
power relies too heavily on individual and voluntaristic
behavior (Burrowes 1996; Martin 1989). For example, Souad
Dajani, in her pioneering study of the Palestinian intifada,
wrote that
Social
power is deeply rooted in social relationships and
patterns of social behavior that are institutionalized
over time and are pervasive throughout society. Power
is located in the social structures in which these
patterns exist and are reproduced. In any given
society, social class arrangements are the more likely
manifestations of this distribution of power. Social
classes intersect in turn with different ethnic,
religious, and other socio-cultural elements of a
given society. People's "obedience" to
rulers, therefore, is not so much an element of free
personal choice that can be reversed at will, but a
characteristic of the way society is organized. (1994,
99-100) |
|
Despite the
diffusion of nonviolence as a conscious strategy
through movements around the world in recent decades,
little is understood about how or why nonviolence
works as a technique for securing social change. |
Dajani does acknowledge that nonviolent action can be a
powerful and effective means of overcoming oppression, but she
also argues that there are processes of marginalization,
dependency, and integration that need to be taken into
account. As a result, power sources within established social
patterns and structures must be identified and described
before people can effectively discredit them and mobilize
opposition to repressive regimes.
In short, Dajani and others consider Sharp's theory of
"withdrawal of consent" an unsatisfactory
explanation for why nonviolent movements succeed because it
does not invite analysis of the structural roots of power in
society. According to Dajani, one must account for such
factors as the roots of social movements, the power and
resources available to the regime and the resistance, and the
means available for changing power relationships to tell the
story of a movement. Cases show that only practitioners able
to identify the structural and/or ideological sources of their
opponents' power, as well as the political, social, economic,
and ideological sources of power and methods available to them
to target these sources of power, can conduct the kinds of
powerful nonviolent campaigns Sharp envisioned. Since there is
so often an asymmetry of power between nonviolent activists
and their opponents, it may be strategically necessary to
target the political will of the opponent rather than its
structures of control; understanding the location and
operation of power permits social movement leaders to better
design and implement tactics of civilian resistance and better
assess those tactics' efficacy.
Nonviolent activists refuse to engage the repressive
apparatus on the state's terms. Rather than staging a military
confrontation, which government forces would almost definitely
win, nonviolent insurgents choose their "weapons
systems" with an eye toward making the regime's exercise
of its power advantage a liability and winning popular
support. Their efforts are aided by the fact that it is easier
to mobilize people to demonstrate nonviolently than it is to
ask them to pick up a gun or a hand grenade, a reality that
creates a disequilibrium in which the unarmed group finds it
easier to recruit supporters than does the government.
Not all prodemocracy nonviolent movements have been
successful, of course. A number have been suppressed, as were
those in El Salvador (1979-81), Burma (1987-88), China (1989),
and Kenya (1989). What is surprising is not that some of them
failed—as have many violent insurgencies around the
world—but that so many of them succeeded. These have
included Bolivia (1977, 1982), Sudan (1985), Haiti (1985),
Philippines (1986), South Korea (1987), Chile (1989), Poland
(1989), East Germany (1989), Czechoslovakia (1989), Mongolia
(1990), Nepal (1990), Mali (1992), Madagascar (1993),
Bangladesh (1996), and Indonesia (1998). Similarly,
spontaneous nonviolent action have thwarted attempted military
coups in Argentina (1987), Russia (1991), and Thailand (1992)
and Paraguay (1996, 1999).
The world is no less conflictual than it has been in years
past. Indeed, the debt crisis, ethnic strife, and
environmental problems are all worsening. However, there has
been a dramatic expansion of civil and political rights over
the past two decades and nonviolent activists have done much
to speed this transition, including hastening the downfall of
communist regimes in Eastern Europe and of right-wing
dictatorships in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. There are
several reasons why insurgents turned away from armed struggle
and began using nonviolent means to affect change.
One is the growing awareness of the increasing costs of
warfare. In a mirror image of Western national security
managers who insisted during the 1960s and 1970s that
guerrilla armies could easily be defeated, many left-wing
propagandists in the Third World perpetuated a counter-myth of
the invincibility of such groups, bolstered by examples from
Vietnam, Algeria, and Mozambique. However, technology has
given state powers an increasing advantage in recent years.
Even when an armed insurgency is victorious, large segments of
the population are displaced, farms and villages are
destroyed, cities and much of the nation's infrastructure are
severely damaged, the economy is wrecked, and there is
widespread environmental devastation. An increasing
realization that the benefits of waging an armed insurrection
may not be worth the costs has led many proponents of human
rights and social change to opt for nonviolent strategies.
Another disincentive to launching armed movements against
dictatorships is the poor record the leaders of such movements
have for establishing pluralistic, democratic, and independent
political systems capable of supporting social and economic
development and promoting human rights once they displace the
former regime. Although some revolutionary governments failed
to deliver on promises of equality, freedom, and prosperity
because they were forced to deal with natural disasters,
foreign intervention, trade embargoes, and other circumstances
beyond their control, it is worth noting that armed struggle
tends to exacerbate these problems and also creates troubles
of its own. For one, armed struggles are often led by a secret
elite vanguard whose members come, over time, to value their
power more than democracy and pluralism. When this happens,
disagreements among rebel leaders that could be resolved
peacefully in nonmilitarized contexts often devolve into
bloody factional fighting. Some countries, like Algeria and
Guinea-Bissau, experienced military coups not long after armed
revolutionary movements ousted colonialists. Others, like
Angola and Cambodia, experienced bloody civil wars.
Still another reason democratic activists might decide
against armed revolt is their recognition that keeping a
strong military requires dependence on outside benefactors for
arms supplies. For much of the postcolonial period,
revolutionary governments depended on the Soviet Union for
arms and tactical aid, and that country—like any major
power—traditionally tied strings to its aid. Acceptance of
even relatively low levels of assistance during the course of
armed struggle creates a dependent relationship that is hard
to break. Worse, a movement's securing aid from one major
power may drive the government to seek aid from a rival power,
even after the old regime is defeated.
For example, having overthrown the Somoza dictatorship in
1979, the popular Sandinista Front—despite largely avoiding
sliding into a Communist dictatorship—still faced attacks by
armed mercenary groups trained and equipped by the U.S.
government. American policymakers justified their support of
the Contras on the (largely fabricated) grounds that the
Sandinista military had aggressive designs on neighboring
countries. The national security threat posed by the United
States strengthened the political position of the military
wing of the Sandinistas, which siphoned precious funds away
from desperately needed domestic programs and imposed military
conscription and counter-insurgency measures that alienated
some important segments of the population. The human rights
situation, which had improved dramatically after the overthrow
of Somoza, began to deteriorate. The Contra War led to
widespread destruction, a collapse of the Nicaraguan economy,
and the Sandinistas' electoral defeat in 1990.
The number and severity of problems affecting many Third
World countries is so extensive that a successful armed
movement against an authoritarian regime—even if it has a
strong organization, proven mobilization skills, and a
coherent ideology—simply lacks the monetary and
institutional resources necessary to address the pressing
concerns facing a country in transition after a devastating
civil war. As a result, advocates of change have shown a
growing interest in the utilization of tactics that will
minimize the degree of dislocation in the country and maximize
the segments of the population that can become contributing
members of a postauthoritarian political system designed to
help build a new society respectful of human rights.
The growing awareness of the power of nonviolent action
grows out of several phenomena. First, present-day insurgents
have repeatedly seen that armed resistance tends to push
undecided elements of the population toward support of the
government. When facing a violent insurgency, government
officials can easily justify their use of repressive tactics.
By contrast, efforts to use such measures to quell unarmed
resistance movements usually create greater sympathy for the
regime's opponents. Gene Sharp (1973, II: 110-14; III, passim)
called this phenomenon "political jiu jitsu" because
it allows an opposition movement to use the weight of the
repressive state to achieve the movement's ends. Second,
people have proven much more willing to join unarmed movements
than armed rebellions. Recruiting members from the ranks of
women, seniors, and others beside able-bodied young males
permits movements to broaden their base of support. Finally,
unarmed resistance allows for the creation of alternative
institutions respectful of human rights that undermine the
status quo and form the basis of a new independent and
democratic order.
Armed resistance often backfires by legitimating the
state's use of repressive tactics, whereas the use of violence
by authorities against unarmed dissidents often constitutes a
turning point in nonviolent struggles. Attacks against unarmed
demonstrators have often been the spark that turned periodic
protests into full-scale insurrections.
Authoritarian governments often welcome violent
opposition—and sometimes encourage it through use of agents
provocateurs. Violent repression of nonviolent protests often
transforms popular and elite perceptions of legitimacy and
tends to increase the chances of divisions within
progovernment circles (Sharp 1973, III: 676) for a number of
reasons. First, security officials will likely disagree over
how to effectively deal with the resistance, more so than in
the case of an armed insurgency. Second, since nonviolent
movements appear less threatening to personal security, some
officials and progovernment elites may become less concerned
about the consequences of a compromise with insurgents.
Finally, soldiers and police officers sent to stop a protest
are much more likely to defect or disobey orders to use
violence against peaceful demonstrators than they are when
faced with rioters or guerillas (Lakey 1970).
Nonviolent resistance divides supporters of the status quo,
renders government troops less effective, and can also
challenge the attitudes of people in a country and around the
world. A good example of this comes from the South African
struggle against apartheid. Pictures of whites, members of the
clergy, and other "upstanding citizens" protesting
discriminatory policies were broadcast on television
worldwide, lending legitimacy to anti-apartheid forces and
undermining the regime in a way that armed struggle never
could. As nonviolent resistance within the country escalated,
momentum grew for the imposition of economic sanctions by
South Africa's biggest trading partners. Unable to meet the
rising costs of maintaining the apartheid system, the white
government agreed to pursue reform.
As global interdependence increases, parties to a conflict
must tailor their messages to a nonlocal audience as well as
to members of the immediate community. Just as Gandhi played
to British citizens in Manchester and London and organizers of
civil rights campaigns in the U.S. South communicated their
demands to those in Washington, news of strikes and marches
throughout Eastern Europe during the 1980s was broadcast
around the world, legitimating local protests and putting the
lie to Moscow's claims that each campaign represented a unique
local event organized by unstable dissidents. Likewise, global
media attention to the anti-Marcos movement in the Philippines
in 1986 was instrumental in forcing the U.S. government to
withdraw its support of the dictator.
Television footage of Israeli repression of unarmed
Palestinians during the 1980s had a similar sympathizing
effect on Americans, which was significant because both
private U.S. citizens and the U.S. government have done much
to sustain Israel's military occupation of Palestinian land.
As Rashid Khalidi observed, the Palestinians "succeeded
at last in conveying the reality of their victimization to
world public opinion" (1988, 507).
To succeed in advancing the cause of human rights, leaders
of nonviolent movements must wrest political authority from
state officials and, with popular participation, invest power
in institutions of civil society. As institutions people can
trust to provide services and represent their interests grow
in effectiveness and legitimacy, the regime will become
increasingly impotent and irrelevant. The presence of these
parallel structures, and the independent spaces created by
them, may be significant in affecting the outcome of a human
rights campaign.
|
Armed
resistance often backfires by legitimating the state's
use of repressive tactics, whereas the use of violence
by authorities against unarmed dissidents often
constitutes a turning point in nonviolent struggles. |
The creation of alternative structures provides moral and
practical underpinnings for efforts aimed at bringing about
fundamental social change. In the Philippines, for instance,
Marcos lost power following a withdrawal of sufficient support
of the regime. At the time he left office Marcos effectively
controlled little beyond Malacanang Palace. In fact, the same
day Marcos was sworn in for another term as president in an
official ceremony, Corazón Aquino was taking the presidential
oath simultaneously in another part of the city. Most
Filipinos saw Marcos's election as fraudulent and gave their
allegiance to Aquino. Conversely, the failure of the
prodemocracy demonstrations in Beijing's Tienanman Square
illustrates how the inadequate development of alternative
institutions can make a movement vulnerable to repression.(2)
It helps for some systems of dual power to be created prior to
a successful culmination of a nonviolent struggle.
Obstacles to the success of nonviolent action in support of
human rights are still formidable despite the remarkable
record of such campaigns in recent decades. Authoritarian
governments use legal restrictions, terror, and their
monopolization of news media to make it very difficult to
effectively mobilize popular support for mass action. Decades
of repression engender in citizens a sense of despair and a
lack of empowerment. Members of ethnic minorities feel this
acutely because they have particular difficulty winning
majority support for their efforts against government
repression.
In impoverished societies—which seem most likely to spawn
authoritarian regimes—many basic necessities are in short
supply and access to them is controlled by local elites and
foreigners. Where survival is people's greatest concern,
unarmed groups simply may not be able to hold out long enough
against their oppressors to succeed. In addition, governments
with outside economic support can survive the near total
collapse of their countries' domestic economies. The
Salvadoran junta withstood a series of general strikes in the
early 1980s because the United States government committed
enough aid to finance most of the regime's budget.
Repressive regimes assured of substantial foreign
assistance may be less likely to refrain from using violence
to suppress dissent for fear of fatally damaging their
legitimacy, though they still must be sensitive to how human
rights abuses against nonviolent dissent may affect such
support. In recognition that openly attacking their own
citizens would cost them dearly, many regimes have pursued a
kind of privatization of the repressive apparatus. In such
countries, higher-ranking government officials have tacitly
condoned the formation of progovernment vigilante forces,
which often operate with the direct support of the police and
the military. The goals of these death squads are to
assassinate or otherwise silence leaders and participants in
nonviolent movements and to terrorize the population into
submission. Despite being sanctioned by key actors in the
governing apparatus, the vigilante groups are far enough
outside the official chain of command that government and
military officials can plausibly deny responsibility for or
knowledge of their actions. While most of the nonviolent
activists still blame the government, neutral members of the
population and foreign backers of the regime may accept the
regime's portrayal of itself as a moderate force doing its
best to curb violence and extremism on all sides. When this
happens, calls to stop government-sponsored violence will go
unheeded.
Privatization of the repressive apparatus follows from
adoption of the "low-intensity conflict" (LIC)
counter-insurgency strategy developed by the U.S. military. A
comprehensive strategy that comprises economic development
programs, propaganda, and antiguerrilla military campaigns,
LIC has been implemented in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia,
the Philippines, and elsewhere. Recognizing that shooting into
crowds merely strengthens opposition, U.S. strategists began
working with foreign officials to develop means to combine
repression with nominal civilian control of the national
government aimed at converting the population from insurgents
to supporters of the regime. The purpose of LIC is to
neutralize dissent, not to kill dissenters. With this end in
mind, American advisors trained and cleaned up the local armed
forces in order to restore respectability to the most visible
government institution. At the same time, they encouraged
government officials to neutralize trade union, academic, and
religious leaders; identify and silence grassroots supporters
of the opposition; and limit and repress independent human
rights groups.
American military trainers emphasized responsible crowd
control methods but also gave instruction in other forms of
violence (see McClintock 1984). The now-famous secret Central
Intelligence Agency report to Nicaraguan Contras units
advocates "the selective use of violence" by
paramilitary units as preferable to "indiscriminate"
repression as a means of "decapitating" the
leadership of the opposition (U.S. CIA 1985).
The privatization of the repressive apparatus has had a
chilling effect on the prospects of successful advancement of
human rights. For example, in Sri Lanka, where a nominally
democratic government is facing two simultaneous
insurrections, efforts by human rights activists and others to
salvage some semblance of rule of law are being met with
widespread death squad activity. Fortunately, "nonviolent
intervention" by teams of international volunteers
organized by Peace Brigades International (PBI) and similar
groups has been somewhat effective in protecting activists.
Growing out of the Gandhian tradition, PBI and its similar
groups have sent teams to Guatemala, El Salvador, Sri Lanka,
Colombia, and the West Bank to accompany prominent nonviolent
activists as, essentially, unarmed bodyguards. Because leaders
of even the most repressive regimes do not want to deal with
the diplomatic fallout from international observers,
particularly North Americans or Europeans, being casualties
of—or even just witnessing—death squad attacks, PBI teams
have served as successful deterrents to some of the worst
activities (Mahoney and Eguren 1997). These efforts have been
extremely limited thus far. Yet, while they have yet to evolve
the scape that would constitute an effective means for ending
the threat from death squads, there is certainly some
potential for further development.
Even if nonviolent movements succeed in bringing civil and
political rights to their countries, their leaders may be
unable to improve people's social and economic rights.
Powerful transnational institutions such as the International
Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization can essentially
dictate key economic policies to newly democratic countries.
Also, new regimes are generally held responsible for debts
accumulated by previous dictatorships.
In the spring of 1997, when tens of thousands of
Nicaraguans engaged in a general strike to protest the
austerity programs of President Arnoldo Alemain's government,
former Sandinista soldiers and former Contras left their guns
at home to work together to set up roadblocks and march in
protests during which they adhered strictly to a disciplined
nonviolence. The government relented in the face of massive
nonviolent resistence and withdrew the austerity measures.
However, the United States, through the International Monetary
Fund, forced the government to implement the austerity plan
anyway. Alejandro Bandana, a leading Sandinista intellectual,
asked an American audience a few months later, "Will the
United States allow the people of Latin America to succeed
with nonviolence?" (Bandana 1997).
For nonviolent action to be truly effective in the cause of
human rights, it must be carried out within the context of a
transnational movement that seeks solutions both in the
localities where the worst manifestations of institutional
violence and human rights abuses occur and at their
source—which is often in the advanced industrialized
countries, particularly the United States. Nonviolent
campaigns in the U.S., Great Britain, and other Western
countries against military aid and normal trade relations with
repressive regimes have played an important role in advancing
human rights. The massive nonviolent demonstrations during
last year's World Trade Organization gathering in Seattle3 and
the demonstrations at this year's meeting of the International
Monetary Fund in Washington are among the more dramatic
examples of such transnational solidarity.
The internationalization of nonviolent movements in support
of human rights has been sped up in recent years by the
proliferation of international nongovernmental organizations
and advances in communication technologies. Two decades ago, a
labor leader in an autocratic country might be arrested and
tortured to death by the time word of his disappearance
reached anyone willing to secure his safety or freedom. Today,
such an arrest would unleash a flurry of emails and faxes from
the colleagues of the arrested leader to human rights groups
and sympathetic labor unions in countries around the world.
These groups would send email to their members, who would, in
turn, contact officials of the offending government as well as
their own to demand the activist's release. Within hours,
threats of demonstrations against the regime, boycotts of the
country's exports, and sanctions would reach those in power.
Revolutionaries used to go to their outside supporters for
weapons, ammunition, boots, and other combat supplies. Today's
nonviolent revolutionaries ask for computers, fax machines,
and copiers. The 1992 challenge to Thailand's military coup
was nicknamed "the cell phone revolution" because
coordinators of the massive street protests relied so heavily
on this new means of communication.
Just five years ago, the apparently irreversible Indonesian
takeover of East Timor was widely seen as a classic
illustration of the triumph of realpolitik over international
law and universal standards of human rights. The nationalist
guerrilla army consisted of a couple of hundred poorly armed
men who had to stand against tens of thousands of Indonesian
troops, the United Nations had largely dropped the issue, and
virtually all the great powers, key Asian states, and Islamic
countries tacitly accepted Indonesia's annexation.
Representatives of NGOs in Australia, Europe, and North
America kept the issue alive, however. Few Indonesian
dignitaries could travel abroad without facing demonstrators
and loans and arms sales to Jakarta were often blocked in
legislatures. As a result, when the Indonesian economy
collapsed in 1997 and Suharto's tottering regime's need for
international help became critical, foreign policymakers were
prepared to make withdrawal from East Timor a condition of aid
and Indonesia's leaders were prepared to comply (Zunes 2000).
There seems to be evidence that there is declining faith in
both the efficacy and morality of armed struggle as well as a
decline in faith in electoral politics. As a result, the time
may be right to both explore and expound on the power of
nonviolent action. Governments around the world spend billions
of dollars developing military technologies for their own use
and exporting their hardware and know-how to other countries,
many of which can barely afford them. Perhaps those of us with
an appreciation of the power of nonviolent action should,
despite our more limited resources, be more aggressive in
developing and disseminating what we know about nonviolence
and be willing to use it ourselves to advance the cause of
human rights.
Notes
- James Scott's 1985 study of the Malaysian peasantry's
resistance stands as a model of research on long-standing
and widespread traditions of passive resistance to
authority. Such resistence tends to be quiet and
individualistic, however and, therefore, would not be in
the same category as large-scale nonviolent action
campaigns for human rights.
- That is not to say that the presence or absence of
political parties or unions was the only difference
between the China democracy movement and that in the
Soviet bloc, but only that it was a major factor. Also
crucial, of course, was the attitude of the top-level
leadership. Mikhail Gorbachev allowed and even supported
certain forms of dissent. Deng Xiaoping most emphatically
did not encourage dissent.
- While scattered acts of vandalism by a few dozen
self-described anarchists and street thugs received a
disproportionate amount of media attention, the
demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience by tens of
thousands of anti-WTO protesters were overwhelmingly
nonviolent.
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on Peace Research, Education and Development, Georgetown
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York Press.
Dajani, Souad. 1994. Eyes Without Country: Searching for a
Palestinian Strategy of Liberation. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.
Khalidi, Rashid. 1988. "The Uprising and the Palestine
Question." World Policy Journal 5(3): 497-517.
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Martin, Brian. 1989. "Gene Sharp's Theory of
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