JOHANNESBURG (AP) – Stunned and fascinated by the riot that engulfed the United States Capitol, pro-democracy and human rights activists around the world have also been reassured – because, ultimately, democracy has remained. The system has been tested, but not dropped.
“The institutions demonstrated and defended democracy. It inspires me, ”said Hopewell Chin’ono, an investigative journalist in Zimbabwe who is under pressure from the authorities for calling for peaceful protests of corruption.
Released on bail from a maximum security prison where he was held for six weeks last year, Chin’ono is due to return to court on February 18 to face charges of inciting violence and obstructing justice. The 49-year-old man spoke to the Associated Press by phone from his goat farm before tweeting on Friday that he was being taken into custody again. Later, his lawyers confirmed the arrest – the third in six months.
For outspoken activists fighting in often solitary battles against big and small political bullies, there were lessons to boost morale in President Donald Trump’s failure cling to power, instigating rebel supporters against US lawmakers who were confirming President-elect Joe Biden as his successor.
“Those who enjoyed that show were the dictators. They wanted that chaos, they expected Trump to win. But they were disappointed and, fortunately, the institutions passed, ”Chin’ono told the AP. “For someone like me, for other dissidents who criticize his government in African countries and elsewhere in the world, there is still no place like America.”
But the crackdown on dissidents elsewhere still continued.
Hong Kong police tightened their grip on the democracy movement in the city, making 53 arrests on Wednesday. That carefully executed mass raid, involving 1,000 officers, was quickly overshadowed by deadly violence later that day in Washington.
Pro-democracy activist Lee Cheuk-yan fears that the Capitol’s unrest will strengthen the hand of Chinese Communist rulers in Beijing, offering an advertising opportunity to denigrate the democracy that Chinese state media has seized. Lee faces charges of illegal assembly for organizing a banned pro-democracy demonstration in Hong Kong last year.
“So it’s very discouraging in a way,” said Lee. “But for me personally, I believe that the system is more important than a person.”
“People still aspire to the US model of democracy, because the system exists, the constitution guarantees the separation of powers,” adds Lee.
In exile in London, Hong Kong activist Nathan Law says the US system has demonstrated its resilience against the violence of the crowd.
“The checks and balances are the things we recognize,” he says.
Among the autocratic leaders who sought to take advantage of Washington’s violence was the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. Peaceful protesters have been demanding his resignation after an August election widely regarded as fraudulent that gave him a sixth term. Security forces cracked down on protesters, arresting and beating many of them.
Lukashenko said Thursday: “I warned you: It is bad when they walk on the street, it is even worse when they enter the courtyards, it will be unbearable when they come to their apartments. We must not allow this. “
But Belarusian exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya saw events in the United States as “a good reminder that democracy is not taken for granted. Democracy is an ongoing process and it is what we do with it ”.
In an email to the AP, she dismissed Lukashenko’s comments as one of several “propaganda explosions”.
“They say, ‘Look at America, the same hooligans here,'” wrote Tsikhanouskaya, who was Lukashenko’s main opponent in the election. “Nobody else trusts advertising. People understand that, in such situations, dictators are trying to cover up the ugliness and ineptitude of their systems of government. … The United States has had a serious wake-up call, and American society and the government are responding to that. “
In Poland, Judge Bartlomiej Przymusinski also felt that Wednesday was a bad day for autocrats.
“If the democracy of the United States comes out victorious and shows its institutional perseverance, then it will be easier for all those who are still far from victory to persevere and not give up,” said Przymusinski, spokesman for Poland’s largest judge association, it is resisting efforts by the right-wing government to reduce judicial independence.
“The alternative is a world in which strength and lies would lead us to dark and worthless times, under the rule of dictators in Turkey, Russia or mini-dictators, as in Hungary,” he said by email.
“That is why events in the United States are not an internal matter, but the future of the entire globe,” he added. “A successful defense of democracy can prove to be the vaccine against authoritarian viruses in countries that are still healthy.”
Alfredo Romero, a human rights lawyer in Venezuela, feared that violence in the United States would provide political cover for repressions elsewhere.
“Seeing these terrible images creates a lot of frustration,” said Romero, who was honored by the US State Department for his pro bono work on behalf of political prisoners in Venezuela. “For me, the USA has always been a source of inspiration. The very word ‘freedom’, which is at the origin of the American republic, is a basic pillar of our human rights work and efforts to strengthen the rule of law in Venezuela ”.
In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian activist Issa Amro was not so optimistic. Hours before the Capitol was invaded, an Israeli military court found him guilty of six charges related to his participation in demonstrations against Jewish settlements. The trial is part of what the Palestinians say is a growing crackdown on peaceful protests that the United States has ignored or even actively encouraged.
Amro, now awaiting sentencing, warns that Trump’s influence on global affairs will outlast him.
“I am very pessimistic about the right across the world, not just in the United States, and the energy it has given to anarchists, racists and extremists,” he said.
But in Morocco, human rights activist Abdellatif El Hamamouchi was enthusiastic about what he considered an impressive failure for Trump. Hamamouchi, who says he is followed almost daily by plainclothes policemen, saw hope in the Biden government.
“I said, ‘This is the end of Trump!’ Populists and ‘neo-fascists’ cannot control the oldest democratic institutions, not only in America, but in the world, ”he says. ‘I firmly believed that this event would advance American democracy by reopening the debate about the danger of populism and the nationalist right. “
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Soo reported from Hong Kong; Leicester reported in Le Pecq, France. Associated Press writers Jim Heintz in Moscow; Joshua Goodman in Miami, Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem; Sylvia Hui in London; Monika Scislowska in Warsaw; and Tarik El Barakah in Rabat, Morocco, contributed.