Category: COVID-19

‘Beginning of the end’ for Hong Kong? Two systems ‘dead as a Dodo’

     

Hong Kong activists are planning to take advantage of forthcoming opportunities to counter the recent crackdown on the pro-democracy movement. “We’re only at half-time in the match,” one activist suggested…. Read more »

Reclaiming Democracy: COVID-19 and the Liberal Future

     

Just over a year ago, opposition candidates won the mayoralties of İstanbul, Ankara, and nine other cities across Turkey in a striking political upset for President Erdoğan, notes the Project… Read more »

COVID-19 pandemic reveals malfeasance, misrule & maladroit propaganda  

     

In the absence of global democratic leadership, China is taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to proclaim the superiority of its authoritarian model, notes Keith B. Richburg, director of the… Read more »

Autocratic assertion meets democratic dereliction

     

The coronavirus pandemic must not be used as a pretext for authoritarian states to trample over individual human rights, or repress the free flow of information, the UN secretary general… Read more »

Pandemic of power grabs: Autocrats’ opportunity in disaster

     

Even as some leaders exploit the COVID-19 pandemic, their inability to deal with popular suffering will act against the myth that they and their regimes are impregnable, the Economist observes…. Read more »

Call to free Iran’s women political prisoners: Virus ‘exacerbates regime’s legitimacy crisis’

     

The coronavirus is leading Iranians to question the relationship between state and religion, putting the theocratic state in “an unusual and awkward position“, observers suggest. The Islamic Republic had to… Read more »

COVID-19’s new pretexts for consolidating autocrats’ power

     

Authoritarian-minded leaders around the world have used the coronavirus emergency to consolidate power. In Europe, the governments of Poland and Hungary have done that and more. They have managed to… Read more »

How China’s authoritarian model made Covid pandemic worse

     

China must be held accountable for the coronavirus outbreak, as thousands of lives could have been saved if it had acted earlier, says a leading human rights advocate. The Chinese… Read more »

Russian, Chinese, Iranian disinformation narratives echoing each other

     

China, Iran and Russia are using the coronavirus crisis to launch a propaganda and disinformation onslaught against the United States, the State Department warns in a new analysis, POLITICO’s Betsy… Read more »

Hong Kong’s constitutional crisis escalates

     

As the world has been engulfed by the coronavirus pandemic, the authorities in Hong Kong have arrested prominent pro-democracy figures in politics, civil society and the media, waging a broad… Read more »