In Australia, police are reappraising their riot control techniques after a group of North Coast women successfully calmed a gang of violent youths in January by walking towards them chanting peace slogans.The women took action after they saw a group of bare-chested young men, armed with baseball bats and metal poles, fighting and smashing parked cars outside a dance party at Repentance Creek Hall at Rosebank in the Byron Bay hinterland.
"People had blood on their faces, it was like a battle zone," Camilla Warner, 34, told The Northern Star newspaper.
"We walked towards them chanting, 'love in our heart, love in our heart'. I was on the front line as we approached and I could hear the sound of glass smashing and we started chanting 'stop, stop'.
"As the two groups came together, the fighting and vandalism stopped and they started talking, Warner said.
This is understood to be the most successful use of peaceful measures to disarm violent opponents since Gandhi brought the British Empire to heel with his "ahimsa", or "non-violent" movement.
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