Foreign Digest: Italy, Hungary, Venezuela and Ukraine

Italy

            Several Mayors of major port cities are rebelling against the xenophobic populist Government’s anti-migrant law that closes ports to refugees or immigrants rescued at sea, thereby jeopardizing the migrants’ safety and violating their human rights.  Some Regions are joining the Mayors by challenging the national Government’s law in court.

Hungary

            There have been continued protests against the increasingly authoritarian Hungarian Government.  The Government uses nativist arguments tinged with anti-Semitism to try to delegitimize the protestors, even though there is almost no immigration into Hungary.

Venezuela

            The Lima Group of twelve States of the Western Hemisphere, with the sole exception of Mexico, declared late last week it does not recognize the presidential term begun a year ago of the Venezuelan Socialist dictator  because of the lack of free and fair elections in Venezuela.  The eleven signatories of the declaration include Canada, St. Lucia, Guyana and eight Latin American States.

Ukraine

           The Ukrainian Orthodox Church officially became an autochthonous national church late last week.  The independence of the Ukrainian national church from the Russian Orthodox Church validates Ukraine’s independence from the Russian Federation.  The authoritarian and oligarchical Russian regime of Vladimir Putin objected to the independence of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church.  Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed Crimea, in violation of its treaty with Ukraine recognizing the former Soviet Republic’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, including its recognized ownership of Crimea.  Russia also fomented a rebellion by Russophiles in eastern Ukraine that has claimed ten thousand lives.