Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Further excerpt: The Dark Side of Autocratic Rule

Despite the mounting resistance, the forces of autocracy have been on the rise. For example, Brazil elected as president Jair Bolsonaro—a man who, at great risk to public safety, openly encourages the use of lethal force by the military and police in a country already wracked by a sky-high rate of police killings and more than 60,000 homicides per year.

Established autocrats and their admirers continued their disregard for basic rights. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi persisted in silencing independent voices and civic groups and locking up thousands for their presumed political views. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte encouraged more summary executions, supposedly of drug suspects, but often of people guilty of no more than being poor young men. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban implemented his brand of “illiberal democracy.” Poland’s de facto ruler, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, sought to stack his country’s courts with his preferred judges, undermining the judiciary’s independence. Italy’s interior minister and deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, closed ports to refugees and migrants, scuttled efforts to save migrants’ lives at sea, and stoked anti-immigrant sentiment. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to halt the demonizing of Muslims while attacking civic groups that criticized his rights record or environmental policies. The Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, tightened his grip on power by holding sham elections from which the opposition party was banned. US President Donald Trump disparaged immigrants and minorities and tried to bully judges and journalists whom he deemed to stand in his way. Russia under President Vladimir Putin continued its multi-year crackdown on independent voices and political opposition. China closed off any possibility of organized opposition to the increasingly one-man rule of Xi Jinping.

Beyond the immediate victims, some of the economic costs of autocratic rule became more visible over the course of the year. Oil-rich Venezuela once enjoyed one of Latin America’s highest standards of living but today, under the autocratic rule of President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuelans suffer severe shortages of food and medicine, causing millions to flee the country. President Erdogan, persisting with large-scale building projects that often benefited his allies, oversaw a plummeting currency and a skyrocketing cost of living in Turkey. Mozambique discovered that $2 billion in government funds had disappeared from its treasury.

China’s much-touted “One Belt, One Road” initiative to develop trade infrastructure fostered autocratic mismanagement in other countries. In keeping with Beijing’s longstanding practice, Belt and Road loans come with no visible conditions, making Beijing a preferred lender for autocrats. These unscrutinized infusions of cash made it easier for corrupt officials to pad their bank accounts while saddling their people with massive debt in the service of infrastructure projects that in several cases benefit China more than the people of the indebted nation.

In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad cancelled three major infrastructure projects financed by Chinese loans amid concerns that his predecessor, Najib Razak, had agreed to unfavorable terms to obtain funds to cover up a corruption scandal. Unable to afford its enormous debt burden, Sri Lanka was forced to surrender control of a port to China, built with Chinese loans but without an economic rationale in the home district of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Kenya came to rue a Chinese-funded railroad that offered no promise of economic viability. Pakistan, Djibouti, Sierra Leone, and the Maldives all expressed regret at having agreed to certain Chinese-funded projects. Talk of a Chinese “debt trap” became common.

The Pushback

The growing pushback against autocratic rule and the corruption it frequently fueled took various forms over the past year. Sometimes elections or public pressure were the vehicle. Malaysian voters ousted their corrupt prime minister, Najib Razak, and the ruling coalition in power for almost six decades, for a coalition running on an agenda of human rights reform. Maldives voters rejected their autocratic president, Yameen Abdulla Gayoom. In Armenia, whose government was mired in corruption, Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan had to step down amid massive protests. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis faced growing protests against his alleged corruption. Ethiopia, under popular pressure, replaced a long-abusive government with a new one led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who embarked on an impressive reform agenda. US voters in the midterm elections for the House of Representatives seemed to rebuke President Trump’s divisive and rights-averse policies.

Sometimes independent institutions of government resisted the overreach of their country’s leaders. Poland’s independent judges refused to abandon their jobs in the face of Kaczynski’s efforts to purge them; the European Court of Justice later backed their refusal. Guatemala’s Constitutional Court reversed President Jimmy Morales’s attempt to bar from the country the chief investigator of a UN-backed anti-corruption body after it started probing his own alleged financial wrongdoing. US Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by former President George W. Bush, publicly berated President Trump for disparaging “an Obama judge” who had ruled against Trump’s efforts to limit migrants’ right to seek asylum.

In many cases, the public led the resistance in the streets. Large crowds in Budapest protested Orban’s moves to shut Central European University, an academic bastion of liberal inquiry and thought. Tens of thousands of Poles repeatedly took to the streets to defend their courts from the ruling party’s attempts to undermine their independence. People across the United States and dozens of companies protested Trump’s forcible separation of immigrant children from their parents.

Multilateral Resistance

New governments had to pick up the defense of human rights because several important governments faltered. President Trump preferred to embrace autocrats whom he viewed as friendly, even if parts of the US government often tried to work around the White House. The British government, worried about Brexit, appeared willing to publicly advocate for human rights mainly in countries where British trade or commercial interests were limited. French President Emmanuel Macron defended democratic values rhetorically, but too often found reasons to avoid applying those principles when they implicated efforts to curb migration, fight terrorism, or secure commercial opportunities. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke against anti-rights policies emanating from Moscow and Washington but was often beset by political challenges at home. China and Russia did all they could to undermine global rights enforcement, while at home they imposed the most repressive rule in decades.

UN Human Rights Council

Yours, a good article - https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/global