The Principles of Non-violence

• Respect for the opponent/everyone as human beings;
• Care for everyone involved in a conflict;
• Refusal to harm, damage or degrade people/living things/the earth;
• If suffering is inevitable, willingness to take it on oneself rather than to inflict it on others; not retaliating to violence with violence;
• Belief that everyone is capable of change;
• Appeal to the opponents’ “humanity”
• Recognition that no one has a monopoly on truth, thus aiming to bring together our “truth” and the opponents’ “truth”;
• A belief that means are the ends-in-making, so the means have to be consistent with the ends;
• Openness rather than secrecy