World is not a safe place for freedom and democracy
THE next time we enjoy the purchase of some valuefor-money product made in China, it’s unlikely we’ll be troubled by the contents of a damning and deeply disturbing UN report accusing the Chinese communist dictatorship of mass human rights abuses against a section of its own people.
The outgoing UN high commissioner for human rights this week confirmed what the world has known for years – that China has been torturing, by arbitrary detention, forced medication and sexual abuse including rape, the Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region in a systematic onslaught that could be ‘crimes against humanity’. The UN didn’t go as far as the United States which branded what’s going on as genocide.
Meanwhile. in Saudi Arabia reports are emerging that a woman has been given a 45-year jail sentence for using social media to ‘violate the public order’. That means saying anything even obliquely critical or in any way undermining of the absolute monarchy that rules the kingdom.
Against the backdrop of Vladimir Putin’s savage attack on Ukraine, these events remind us of the growing threat from authoritarian political leaders with a taste for total control.
Donald Trump’s wings may have been clipped in the United States but nearer home Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban continues to spew his hardright bile and, in Poland, the Law and Justice ruling party is locked in a battle with the EU over its attempt to squash judicial independence.
Democracy and freedom is cornered. The world has reversed to a very dangerous cross-roads.