Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always,defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance. In one view (in India, known as Ahimsa or satyagraha) it could be said that it is compassion in the form of respectful disagreement. One of its earliest massive implementations was brought about by Egyptians against the British occupation in the1919 Revolution. Civil disobedience is one of the many ways people have rebelled against what they deem to be unfair laws. It has been used in many well-documented non violent resistance movements in India (Gandhi's campaigns for independence from the British Empire), in Czechoslovakia's velvet revolution and in East Germany to oust their communist governments, in south Africa in the fight against apartheid, in the American civil rights movements, in the Singing Revolution to bring independence to the Baltic countries from the Soviet Union, recently with the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia and the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, among other various movements worldwide.
