US democracy’s resilience heartens activists
JOHANNESBURG – Stunned and riveted by the riot that engulfed the U.S. Capitol, pro-democracy and human rights campaigners around the world also were reassured – because, ultimately, democracy held. The system was tested but not toppled.
“The institutions came through and defended democracy. That inspires me,” said Hopewell Chin’ono, an investigative journalist in Zimbabwe who is under pressure from authorities for calling for peaceful protests of corruption.
Out on bail from a maximum-security jail where he was held for six weeks last year, Chin’ono is due back in court Feb. 18 to face charges of inciting violence and obstructing justice. The 49-year-old spoke by phone to the Associated Press from his goat farm before tweeting Friday that was being taken into custody again. His attorneys later confirmed the arrest – his third in six months.
For outspoken activists facing often-lonely fights against political bullies big and small, there were morale-boosting lessons from Wednesday’s incident in which riotous supporters of President Donald Trump descended on the Capitol building in Washington as U.S. lawmakers were confirming President-elect Joe Biden as Trump’s successor.
“The only people enjoying that spectacle were the dictators. They wanted that chaos, they were hoping that Trump would win. But they were disappointed and, thankfully the institutions came through,” Chin’ono told the AP. “For someone like me, for other dissidents who are criticizing their government in African countries and other places in the world, there is still no place like America.”
But the clampdown on dissidents elsewhere still went on.
Hong Kong police tightened their grip on the city’s embattled democracy movement, making 53 arrests Wednesday. That mass roundup, involving 1,000 officers, was rapidly overshadowed by the deadly rampage later that day in Washington.
Pro-democracy activist Lee Cheuk-yan worries that the Capitol rampage strengthens the hand of the Chinese territory’s Communist rulers in Beijing, offering a propaganda opportunity to denigrate democracy that Chinese state-controlled media seized upon. Lee faces charges of unlawful assembly for organizing a banned pro-democracy rally in Hong Kong last year.
“So it’s very disheartening in a way,” Lee said. “But for me personally, I believe that the system is more important than a person.”
“People still aspire to the U.S. model of democracy because the system is there, the constitution guarantees the separation of powers,” Lee added.
Exiled in London, Hong Kong activist Nathan Law said the U.S. system demonstrated its resilience against mob violence.
“The checks and balances, these are the things that we recognize,” he said.
In Poland, Judge Bartlomiej Przymusinski also felt that Wednesday was a bad day for autocrats.
“If the U.S. democracy comes out victorious and shows its institutional perseverance, then it will be easier to all those who are still far away from victory, to persevere and not give up,” said Przymusinski, a spokesman for Poland’s largest association of judges, which is resisting efforts by the right-wing government to chip away at judicial independence.
“The alternative is a world in which force and lies would lead us into dark times without values, under the rule of dictators from Turkey, from Russia, or minidictators, like in Hungary,” he said by email.
“This is why the events in the U.S. are not an internal matter but the matter of 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 the U.S. violence would provide political cover for crackdowns elsewhere.
“Seeing these terrible images generates a lot of frustration,” said Romero, who has been honored by the U.S. State Department for his pro bono work on behalf of political prisoners in Venezuela. “For me, the U.S. has always been a source of inspiration. The very word ‘freedom,’ which is at the origins of the American republic, is a basic pillar of our human rights work and efforts to strengthen the rule of law in Venezuela.”
In Morocco, human rights activist Abdellatif El Hamamouchi was excited by what he saw as a stunning failure for Trump. Hamamouchi, who said he is followed almost daily by plainclothes police, saw hope in the Biden administration.
“I said, ‘This is the end of Trump!’ Populists and ‘neo-fascists’ cannot control the most ancient democratic institutions, not only in America, but in the world,” he said. “I firmly believed that this event would advance American democracy by reopening the debate about the danger of populism and the nationalist right.”