People have the wrong idea about protests. A lot of protests are essentially "sanctioned" by the government with governments (intelligence agencies) actually funding and initiating some protests. These protests get news coverage and are promoted as being a part of the "democratic system". In reality, protesting in the manner in which the leadership didn't want has never been allowed but the average person doesn't understand this.

If you're going to protest a position that is actually truly against what the government wants, you run the risk of prison/death/total life destruction so if you are going to protest you should only do it if you're willing to go all the way. If you're willing to go all the way then you shouldn't even be protesting because there's far more effective "all-in" things you could be doing rather than protesting.

Thus, the only logical conclusion someone should come to is that protesting is entirely worthless and it's just playing with fire for absolutely nothing to gain.