JOHANNESBURG (AP) – Astonished and born of the revolt that engulfed the US Chapter, pro-democracy and human rights activists around the world were also reassured – because, in the end, democracy took place. The system was tested but not overturned.
“The institutions came and defended democracy. That inspires me, ”said Hopewell Chin’ono, a Zimbabwean investigative journalist who is under pressure from authorities to call for peaceful protests against corruption.
Released on bail from a maximum security prison, where he was detained for six weeks last year, Chin’ono is due to return to court on February 18 to be charged with inciting violence and obstructing justice. The 49-year-old spoke by phone with The Associated Press on his goat farm before posting on Twitter on Friday, who was detained again. His lawyers later confirmed his arrest – the third in six months.
For sincere activists who often struggle in solitary battles against aggressors large and small, there have been lessons to boost morale in the failure of President Donald Trump. to cling to power by arousing outrageous supporters of US lawmakers confirming President-elect Joe Biden as his successor.
“The only people who enjoyed that show were the dictators. They wanted that chaos, they hoped Trump would win. But they were disappointed and, fortunately, the institutions came, “Chin’ono told AP. “For someone like me, for other dissidents who criticize their government in African countries and elsewhere in the world, there is still no place like America.”
But the decline of dissidents elsewhere continued.
Hong Kong police tightened control of the city’s democratic movement, making 53 arrests on Wednesday. That carefully executed round table, involving 1,000 officers, was quickly overshadowed by the deadly rage of that day in Washington.
Pro-democracy activist Lee Cheuk-yan worries that the anger of the Chapter is strengthening the hand of Chinese Communist leaders in Beijing, providing an opportunity for propaganda to denigrate the democracy that the Chinese state-controlled media has taken advantage of. Lee faces charges of illegal assembly for holding a banned pro-democracy rally in Hong Kong last year.
“So it’s kind of discouraging,” Lee says. “But for me personally, I think the system is more important than a person.”
“People still aspire to the model of democracy in the United States, because the system exists, the constitution guarantees the separation of powers,” Lee added.
Exiled to London, Hong Kong activist Nathan Law says the US system has shown resistance to mafia violence.
“Checks and balances, these are the things we recognize,” he says.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was among the autocratic leaders who tried to turn Washington’s anger to their advantage. Peaceful protesters demanded his resignation after the August elections, widely considered rigged, gave him a sixth term. Security forces cracked down on protesters, arresting and beating many of them.
Lukashenko said on Thursday: “I warned you: it is bad when you walk on the street, it is even worse when you enter the yard, it will be unbearable when they come to your apartments. We must not allow this. “
But Belarus’ exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya saw the events in the United States as “a good reminder that democracy is not self-evident.” Democracy is an ongoing process and that is what we make of it. “
In an e-mail to the AP, she dismissed Lukashenko’s comments as one of several “propaganda outbursts.”
They say, “Look at America, the same hooligans as here,” wrote Tsikhanouskaya, who was Lukashenko’s main opponent in the election. “No one trusts propaganda anymore. People understand that in such situations, dictators try to cover up the ugliness and ineptitude of their systems of government. … The US has had a serious wake-up call, and American society and the government are responding to that. “
In Poland, Judge Bartlomiej Przymusinski also considered Wednesday to be a bad day for autocrats.
“If US democracy emerges victorious and shows institutional perseverance, then it will be easier for all those who are still far from victory to persevere and not give up,” said Przymusinski, a spokesman for the largest association of judges in the United States. Poland, which opposes the right-wing government’s efforts to eliminate judicial independence.
“The alternative is a world where force and lies would lead us into worthless dark times, under the leadership of dictators in Turkey, Russia or mini-dictators, as in Hungary,” he said in an e-mail.
“This is why US events are not an internal matter, but a matter for the future of the entire globe,” he added. “A successful defense of democracy may prove to be the vaccine against authoritarian viruses in still healthy countries.”
Alfredo Romero, a human rights lawyer in Venezuela, feared that US violence would provide political coverage for repression elsewhere.
“Seeing these terrible images is very frustrating,” said Romero, who was honored by the US State Department for his pro bono work on behalf of Venezuelan political prisoners. “For me, the United States has always been a source of inspiration. The very word “freedom”, which is at the origin of the American republic, is a basic pillar of our work and efforts in the field of human rights to strengthen the rule of law in Venezuela. “
In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian activist Issa Amro was less optimistic. Hours before the Chapter was assaulted, an Israeli military tribunal found him guilty of six counts of involvement in demonstrations against Jewish settlements. The process is part of what Palestinians say is a growing crackdown on peaceful protests that the United States has ignored or even actively encouraged.
Amro, who is now awaiting sentencing, warns that Trump’s influence on global affairs will survive him.
“I am very pessimistic about the right wing around the world, not just the United States, and the energy it has given to anarchists, racists and extremists,” he said.
But in Morocco, human rights activist Abdellatif El Hamamouchi was thrilled by what he saw as an astonishing failure for Trump. Hamamouchi, who says he is being pursued almost daily by plainclothes police, has seen hope in the Biden administration.
“I said, ‘This is the end of Trump! “Populists and ‘neo-fascists’ cannot control the oldest democratic institutions, not only in America but in the world,” he says. “I strongly believed that this event would advance American democracy by reopening the debate on the danger of populism and nationalist law.”
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Soo reported from Hong Kong; Leicester reported from Le Pecq, France. Associated Press writers, Jim Heintz, Moscow; Joshua Goodman of Miami, Joseph Krauss of Jerusalem; Sylvia Hui in London; Monika Scislowska in Warsaw; and Tarik El Barakah from Rabat, Morocco, contributed.