Let’s turn our eyes to abuses in Egypt
THE WORLD seems to be going completely bonkers, with current international politics often being stranger than fiction and defying all rational logic. Am I the only concerned South African who is totally mystified and disgusted?
Much of the media seem besotted with the president’s lavish lifestyle at Nkandla, but seem to have paid scant attention to the gross human rights abuses in Egypt, and the part the bullying US is tacitly playing in that abomination, by turning a blind eye.
After a military coup deposing the democratically elected Egyptian government, another 683 citizens have just been sentenced to death in a farcical kangaroo court trial with the proceedings only lasting a few minutes and the charges not even having been read to the accused.
It is a scandalous outrage that comes nowhere close to anything that happened in South African courts during the height of apartheid era oppression.
However while the US expresses outrage and whips up global hysteria about the Ukraine imbroglio where Crimeans voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to secede and rejoin the Russian motherland, they are strangely mute about the Egyptian putsch, the subsequent brutal repression against all opposition groups, and even the media.
There are no calls from President Obama for the American sycophant allies to impose punitive sanctions on Egypt as were imposed on Russia.
What a huge disappointment Obama has been since he took office as America’s first black president.
He took over on a wave of optimism from a world grown weary of endless wars and strife. Far from being a global peacemaker, his presidency has arguably even been much worse than his warmonger predecessor George Bush.
He has certainly deployed far more drones to Pakistan, killing hundreds of civilians, totally against the wishes of the Pakistan government.
Surely Obama should have the decency to return his prematurely awarded Nobel Peace Prize as international tensions have markedly increased during his watch? Brian Venter