Foreign Digest: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Hungary, Georgia, Gaza and Syria

Venezuela: The Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, a conservative former legislator who was barred from public office by the Socialist dictatorship, won the Vaclav Havel award. The award is named for the Czech playwright who was a dissident under Communism during the Cold War. Meanwhile, the Carter Center published its analysis of the results of the presidential election in June, in which it found that the candidate Machado backed, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a center-right former diplomat, was elected by a 2:1 margin of votes. The Center and United Nations observers were the only international observers allowed in the South American State during the elections for a six-year term. Both have condemned the election as failing to meet the standards for being free and fair. The Carter Center’s results match the documentation from most precincts in Venezuela that proved a decisive win for Gonzalez, but the pro-regime electoral commission declined to publish the results and the regime-favoring supreme court upheld its decision. Gonzalez has been driven into exile and Machado into hiding as the Socialists, who took power 25 years ago through elections and have become increasingly authoritarian, persecute the opposition and have been violently breaking up peaceful protests. Nicaragua: United Nations report found that political detainees in Nicaragua have been tortured in various ways by the Marxist Sandinista regime of longtime dictator Daniel Ortega. Dozens of political prisoners remain incarcerated after over a hundred were sent into exile. The Sandinistas seized power militarily in 1979 and ruled tyrannically under Ortega until they were forced by a counterrevolution backed by the United States and other international pressure to allow elections in 1990, which they lost. Ortega was elected President of Nicaragua in 2007 with a promise not to become dictatorial again, but he has broken that promise by persecuting opposition candidates, repressing non-governmental organizations, and using violence against peaceful protestors. Hungary: The European Union’s European Commission has recently referred EU member Hungary to the EU’s Court of Justice for the 2023 Hungarian “sovereignty” law that targets individuals or organizations that receive foreign funding. The EU President has expressed concern about Hungary’s deepening ties with the imperialist Russian Federation and Communist China, which create a risk to the EU’s security. Hungary was denied funds by the EU, which has labeled the Hungarian President, who rules by decree, an “elected autocrat.” A United States Republican Senate delegation to Hungary last week expressed similar concern about the Hungarian Government’s backsliding from liberty and representative government and its close relations with Russia and China. The delegation’s exhortations to the Hungarian President to change his policies reflect the Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s condemnation of Hungary’s drift toward autocracy and toward enemies of the West, which is contrary to American interests. The Majority Leader has strongly criticized the isolationist and “nationalist” Trumpist wing of the GOP versus Reagan Republicanism, which favored U.S. global leadership to defend American security, independence, and freedom. Georgia: There will be parliamentary elections in Georgia on October 26. The increasingly pro-Russian and illiberal ruling party is competing versus the pro-European pro-freedom opposition. Most Georgians favor their State joining the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the defensive pact led by the U.S. Georgia has applied for membership in both organizations and enshrined joining them in its constitution. The ruling party says it also favors membership, but its support for a Russian-style “foreign agents” law has alienated it from the West and the EU. The Russian Federation invaded the former Soviet Republic in the South Caucuses in 2008, seizing two breakaway territories in which it set up puppet governments that declared their independence that is only recognized by Russia and a handful of its allies. Russian forces then encroached further onto Georgian territory, instead of withdrawing. Gaza and Syria: The United States led a joint operation with Iraq and Jordan that was conducted in Gaza to free an Iraqi Yazidi who had been kidnapped 10 years ago as an 11-year-old girl by Islamic State terrorists. She had been held in captivity ever since, until her captor was recently killed in the ongoing war between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists that rule the self-governing territory and use it as a base for attacks on Israel. She was able to signal for help, but remained trapped in Gaza. The Islamic State, the off-shoot of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, killed thousands of Yazidis, who have a different faith from Islam, and kidnapped thousands of others, many of whom were sold into sexual slavery or recruited as child soldiers. Although a few thousand Yazidis have been freed or rescued, thousands more remain unaccounted for, with most of them presumed dead. The I.S. had taken over large swathes of Syria and northern Iraq and declared a caliphate, until an American led international coalition was invited by Iraq in 2014 to destroy the Islamists, which was successful in killing its leader and deprive it of all its territory, but pockets remain and there are I.S. affiliates around the Islamic world. Meanwhile, the U.S. conducted more airstrikes against Islamist State targets in Syria.