oa Burgerlijk ongehoorzaam en de gevolgen in het persoonlijk leven

In our ancient, prosperous and democratic Europe, we find ourselves in the fortunate position of being able, as citizens individually or as a group, to practice ‘civil disobedience’ – be the reason concerns about the climate or about our self-determination – without this leading to overly dramatic, let alone life-threatening, consequences for the individuals involved. This is decidedly different elsewhere, in less democratic countries like for instance Russia, Saudi-Arabia, Iran, Turkey. The price we sometimes do have to pay – must be prepared to pay? – for our civil disobedience is, fortunately, decidedly lighter. But that doesn’t mean it cannot at times be a burden in our otherwise light existence. In this paper I want to illustrate this by means of my own civil disobedience and its consequences.