Thank you Paul, you’re quite right… I should have checked my semantics, victims are by nature innocent. Perhaps this is a phrase that has been repeated a lot across the media thus permeating my mind?

As regards the GDR I stand by the fact that the GDR leadership could see successive waves of mobilisation week after week and realised that they could not hold on, the circumstance of a misinterpreted command is well known to me (I am a fluent German speaker that studied these events) I also lived in the former east for an extended period. The point I am making is that massive repeated peaceful protest *is* an effective tool that should be used when we wish to change things. I believe that remains to be true.