Foreign Digest: Hungary, Syria and China

Hungary

            The Hungarian Parliament, led by far-right nationalists, the week before last gave the authoritarian Prime Minister the power for an indefinite period to rule by decree and to suspend the legislature and even parliamentary elections, using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to seize more powers.  The first powers exercised were used for non-pandemic matters. 

Hungary has become increasingly autocratic and corrupt.  Several fellow European Union members have warned about the excessive measures eroding representative government and liberty.  The European People’s party, of which the ruling Hungarian party is a suspended member, should consider expelling it, if the measure is not lifted within a reasonable time.

Syria

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, of which 193 States are members, including Syria, reports Syria’s Bashar Assad regime used chlorine and sarin gas on civilian targets in 2017 during the Syrian Civil War.  The Baathist regime had lied that its chemical weapons had been re-purposed to conventional weapons, but had provided no proof of the conversion. 

The war has lasted nine years and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions.  Non-Islamist Arabs and Kurds and Islamists have rebelled against the tyrant Assad.  Iran, the Russian Federation and the Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organization back Assad.  The United States and some Western and Arab allies were fighting the Islamist terrorists in Syria while supporting some non-Islamist Arabs and Kurds, with Turkey, ever-wary of the Kurds because of domestic concerns about separatism, backing its own faction.  The U.S. did punish Assad in 2017 with limited air strikes for using chemical weapons.  Israel has also struck weapons of mass destruction targets in Syria before and during the war.  Russia, led by tyrant Vladimir Putin, has consistently defended Assad at the United Nations from allegations of using chemical weapons.  Russian forces had targeted hospitals and aid convoys with bombing for their Syrian ally.

China

            There were several arrests last week of leaders of peaceful protests in Hong Kong over the years that had taken place over the last several years.

           Communist China had promised when the city-state reverted to Chinese rule from British rule in 1997 that it would respect Hong Kong’s autonomy and liberty, but Peking has increasingly encroached on the territory’s freedom.  Mass protests were sparked last year when the Peking-dominated territorial government proposed an extradition law that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be deported to the mainland for suspicion of crimes committed in the territory, which could have been a tool against dissidents.  The outcry forced the measure to be withdrawn, but other concerns remain, including the treatment of protestors, which have been validated by the latest roundup.