Looking at just the title, it makes it sound like the government somehow drove former pacifists to violence, which isn't remotely true. It's a story of how the government has been treating those pacifists like violent terrorists; they haven't at all become terrorists.
Of course that's what they've become. They were even convicted of it. What Big Brother defines as terrorism has very little to do with reality, of course.
The real problem is if you make the penalty for non-violent protest the same as the penalty for violent protest, you're relying solely on the perpetrators ethics and morality to not shoot the place up and burn it down. After all they get the same penalty for holding up a banner as for doing something actually violent... so why not make "more" of a statement?
