Iran and the power of small acts of resistance

guardian.co.uk

A new book on innovative acts of resistance in history should inspire the many Iranians hoping to defy the regime

In 2007, Burmese protesters, fearful of being arrested if they took to the streets themselves, attached pictures of their military dictator to stray dogs and set them roaming the streets instead. The riot police were unable to arrest the dogs. In Poland during the 1980s, the Solidarity movement challenged General Jaruzelski's regime by refusing to watch TV at the time state news was broadcast. To show they were boycotting, they pushed prams in the streets containing TV sets.

Also in the 1980s, a group of Oxford students who were angry at Barclays Bank's involvement in apartheid South Africa labelled the bank's cash dispensers with graffiti saying "Black only" and "White only". These are just a few examples of small but innovative and creative acts of resistance used by people around the world to challenge and confront the abuse of power.

Many of them are collected in a recently published and very enjoyable book by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson: Small Acts of Resistance: How a Bit of Courage, Tenacity and Ingenuity Can Change the World. The book is an admirable collection of well-chosen, and sometimes under-reported tales of resistance from different countries around the world, including my own home country, Iran.

Since last summer, Iran has been a good example of where many of these brilliant ideas have flourished and challenged a brutal regime that imagines by arresting thousands and killing hundreds it has managed to silence the green movement for ever. The recent defections of two Iranian diplomats in Belgium and Finland brought hope for people in Iran, especially when they revealed that, in their view, more than 80% of foreign ministry employees privately support the green movement.

Some of the small acts of resistance used by the green movement to challenge the regime have become internationally known – such as shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) from rooftops at night – but there are some brilliant examples that have not been reported sufficiently.

One of them happened after the arrest of a prominent student activist, Majid Tavakoli, who is still in jail. A year ago, he was invited to give a speech at Amirkabir university in Tehran to mark Iran's national student day. He was arrested during the event and a veiled photo of him was published by the state-run news agencies, claiming he was cross-dressing in order to escape from the police.

The veiled photo was published in order to humiliate him, but in a matter of days thousands of Iranian boys posted veiled photos of themselves on Facebook and their blogs and launched a campaign named "We are all Majid". Many even went further and posed as girls – to challenge the regime over its oppression of women's rights – just to say that even if Majid had put on women's clothing it's not humiliating.

In another act of resistance last year bloggers and internet users decided to post the phrase "Ahmadinejad is not my president" on the internet as much as possible – in the hope that when people began typing "Ahmadinejad is ..." in Google searches, Google would automatically suggest they were looking for "Ahmadinejad is not my president".

After a year of losses and injuries, it's the time for the green movement in Iran to find itself again. For that, its supporters should read Crawshaw and Jackson's book to learn how people in Poland, Afghanistan, Germany, UK and Burma as well as many others across the world have been able to "bring down dictatorships, change unjust laws or simply give individuals a renewed sense of their own humanity against those who deny it".

I agree with the authors of the book when they say: "Some people are ... brave or deluded enough to believe that change is achievable, if enough people only believe that it can be achieved. They think change is worth taking risks for – even when there is no certainty of the outcome. Those are the people who have made extraordinary change possible in the past" – and it's been through these small acts of resistance that the impossible has become possible.