On August 23, 1989, the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania along the Baltic Sea were connected in one long line. Two million people joined hands along 675 kilometers of road connecting each country's capital, forming a massive human chain. This was "The Baltic Way," a historic nonviolent protest in which a quarter of the Baltic states' population participated. The demonstration that day was a protest against the non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union exactly 50 years earlier on the same date, which had handed the Baltic states over to the Soviet sphere of influence. This human chain became the spark that led to the independence of the Baltic states the following year and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Human chains took on a different form during the 1999 Kosovo crisis when NATO conducted airstrikes on Serbia. Serbian citizens protested the massive bombing by demonstrating on bridges with "target" marks on their chests. However, this drew criticism for being exploited as a tool of exclusionary nationalism defending the brutal ethnic cleansing by the dictatorship of Slobodan Milošević.
Human chains have recently appeared in the Iran situation as well. In response to U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to bomb Iran's major power plants and bridges, Iranian citizens have been protesting by surrounding these facilities with human chains. On the surface, it appeared to be spontaneous resistance against attacks on civilian facilities, but controversy erupted when it was revealed that the Minister of Sports and Youth had urged young people to participate through state media. This overlaps with the dark history of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein using Western civilians as human shields to prevent coalition airstrikes during the Gulf War.
Human chains are sometimes expressions of resistance and protest, and are also used as means for charity and fundraising events. Joining hands in a human chain is merely a simple act, but there are cases when it becomes imprinted with profound meaning. The Baltic states' human chain, in particular, will be long remembered in human history as a symbol of voluntary resistance. However, the cases of Serbia and Iraq show that human chains can be abused by state power and turned into human shields. In the end, what matters is not the form of the human chain, but its content.