Foreign Digest; Burma, China, Philippines, Zimbabwe, Syria

Burma

            Amidst a longtime Muslim insurgency in Burma, there has been ethnic cleansing of Muslims by the Burmese military.  Hundreds of thousands have been killed or forced to flee.  The democratic Burmese government has been slow to address the humanitarian needs of Muslim civilians, let alone to acknowledge genocide or ethnic cleansing.  World leaders have urged Burma to protect Muslim civilians.  The Trump Administration of the United States, however, has declined to describe the Burmese policy as “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing.”

China and the Philippines

            In both China and the Philippines, Donald Trump failed to advocate for press freedoms on his recent Asian trip.  In China, he acquiesced to the demand of the Chinese Communist government not to permit questions from the press at the joint statement of the Chinese and U.S. Presidents, contrary to the practice of past American Presidents.  In the Philippines, Trump offered no response at the joint presidential press conference after the Filipino President called professional journalists “spies.”  Trump, who admires numerous authoritarians and has authoritarian proclivities himself, has praised the murderous Filipino leader for his policy of urging Filipinos to kill suspected drug dealers, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. 

Zimbabwe

            Zimbabwe’s socialist ruling party last week deposed longtime-dictator Robert Mugabe through a military coup led by the Vice President after Mugabe made plans for his much- younger wife to succeed him.  The nonagenarian strongman had ruled the former Rhodesia since 1980.  Mugabe has been forced out as the party’s leader and is being pressured to resign or face impeachment.

Taking over from a white minority government, Mugabe, instead of spreading liberty and representative government, as the Zimbabwean people had joyously hoped, became a tyrant and a thief.  After nationalizing industries and often violently stealing farms from whites, he plunged Zimbabwe into economic ruin, infamously causing the most extreme hyperinflation, necessitating the printing of notes with the record-high denomination of 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars.  One of the last remaining “Big Men” of Africa, Mugabe and his party have held power by oppression and through rigging elections.  Mugabe had praised Donald Trump during the 2016 United States presidential election.  It is hoped that Zimbabweans will finally be free and that free and fair elections will be held soon, but the ruling party’s record of tyranny makes such an outcome doubtful. 

Syria 

           The Russian Federation again has vetoed the United Nations Security Council resolution, sponsored by the United States, to renew the authorization for the Joint Investigative Mechanism, the agency tasked with investigating the use of chemical weapons of mass destruction in Syria.  It is Russian’s tenth veto on the subject.  The agency has concluded that Syria’s Assad regime, which Russia supports, is culpable for using chemical WMDs in its civil war.  As with conventional weapons, Syria targets civilian populations.  The Baathist regime, which is also backed by Iran, is a state sponsor of terrorism.  Russia has a pattern of supporting terrorists under the guise of opposing terrorists and of labeling opponents “terrorists.”  It also has a policy, through propaganda and disinformation, to undermine confidence in the truth, in order to serve the sinister ends of its tyrant, Vladimir Putin, and the oligarchy that backs him.