AROUND THE WORLD THIS WEEK
CHINA
Authorities in China have introduced a range of new measures aimed at curbing the country’s highest Covid-19 surge since the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan in 2020. Lockdowns have been imposed in five cities, affecting 37 million people. The government has approved the use of rapid antigen tests and Pfizer’s antiviral pills. People who test positive with mild symptoms are no longer required to be hospitalised but will rather stay in isolation facilities.
China recorded about 3,000 new cases on 16 March, which is far fewer than many other countries that have relaxed restrictions but alarming in China, which aims to eliminate Covid-19 rather than learn to live with it. The Omicron variant is driving the surge in positive cases.
CHILE
At 36 years old, former student leader Gabriel Boric has been sworn in as Chile’s youngest ever leader, taking the presidential sash from billionaire Sebastian Pinera. His rise follows protests against inequality and corruption that rocked Santiago in 2019, which were partly inspired by mass demonstrations while Boric was a student leader.
He leads a coalition of leftist parties, appointed a female-majority cabinet and lives downtown rather than in a presidential mansion. He has committed to overhauling the economy to fight inequality and strengthening environmental regulation but his coalition does not have a majority in parliament. His most immediate task is to oversee a referendum on a new constitution to replace Augusto Pinochet’s 1980 document.
World Health Organization director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has described the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Tigray as the world’s most serious health emergency, calling on Ethiopia and Eritrea to allow aid organisations to deliver food and medical supplies to the region, which has been largely cut off during the government’s war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
Tedros is from Tigray but has refuted the Ethiopian government’s claims that he supports the TPLF. “Just as we continue to call on Russia to make peace in Ukraine, so we continue to call on Ethiopia and Eritrea to end the blockade, the siege, and allow safe access for humanitarian supplies and workers to save lives,” he said this week.
MEXICO
Journalist Armando Linares López was shot and killed outside his home in the city of Zitácuaro this week, the eighth journalist murdered in Mexico in 2022. Nine were murdered in 2021. Linares was the director of the online news site Monitor Michoacán, known for exposing local government malfeasance and corrupt officials. Six weeks before his murder, he was mourning the killing of his colleague Roberto Toledo.
“We don’t carry weapons. We have only a pen and a notebook to defend ourselves,” said Linares after Toledo’s murder. Reacting to the killing, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the state would hold the murderers accountable. However, he soon returned to his populist rhetoric, attacking the media for undermining his government.
CAMBODIA
A Cambodian court has sentenced 19 opposition leaders and activists to up to 10 years in prison for incitement and conspiracy in what Human Rights Watch called an attempt to silence critics of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party. Seven members of the Cambodian National Rescue Party, which is now dissolved, were tried in absentia while in exile and received 10 years in prison; 12 supporters were sentenced to five years.
“Cambodia’s politicised courts have facilitated Prime Minister Hun Sen’s effort to destroy the last remnants of democratic freedoms and civil and political rights in the country,” said Phil Robertson, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division.