Current Events: Paris and Beirut, Two National Elections And China-Taiwan Meeting

There have been a lot of big news stories around the world in the last few weeks. The latest is of course the terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut (though the latter got considerably less attention, and not just because the death toll was smaller). Attacks like these call for a well thought-out response, not simplistic, ignorant “solutions”, but that hasn’t stopped some people from suggesting the latter. Many, for example, have tried to blame the refugees from Syria who have recently fled to Europe in large numbers, with a number of right-wing governors in the US declaring that they don’t want them in their states (despite lacking any legal authority to contest the federal government’s decisions in such matters) and some Republicans attempting to keep them out of the US altogether, even though the attack was largely carried out by EU citizens. One passport found at the scene appears to have belonged to a Syrian who entered Europe as a refugee, but some have suggested that this may have been a deliberate plant by ISIS, which generally rejects passports and other trappings of modern nation-states but has an interest in turning Westerns against refugees (who they hate) and in getting the West to treat all Muslims as enemies, thereby creating the religious war they want. In any case, if one or even a few out of hundreds of thousands of refugees turn out to be violent radicals, it’s no more reasonable to blame the rest of them for what happened in Paris than it is to blame all white people in the US for the terrorist act of the Charleston shooter. A bigger source of danger remains homegrown radicals, of whatever ideology, whether it’s people like Roof in the US, Breivik in Norway, or the hundreds of French citizens who have gone abroad to fight for ISIS and then returned to France (though even the latter should not all be assumed to be dangerous, as many left due to disillusionment and in at least some cases have rejected radical ideology). In fact, most of the Paris attackers who have been identified were French or Belgian by birth or upbringing, and French President François Hollande, in contrast to the repellent posturing of many conservative American politicians, has emphasized that France has the “humanitarian duty” to take in all the Syrian refugees it had agreed to admit.

This attack does seem to differ from atrocities like the ones in Charleston and Norway, which were committed by individual lunatics, or even the Charlie Hebdo attack at the beginning of the year, which was committed by a few local crazies largely on their own initiative, in that it seems from what is known so far that it may have been at least partly planned and coordinated from abroad. Nevertheless, even if ISIS was directly responsible for the attack, this if anything should mean we should be even more sympathetic to the refugees, since, as others have pointed out, the people who seem to have been responsible for the attack are the same people the refugees are fleeing from. Ironically, the response of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, was considerably more moderate and reasonable than that of many xenophobes in the West. While it may not be surprising that he would strongly condemn attacks by ISIS, a group that is currently one of Hezbollah’s biggest enemies (indeed, one of ISIS’s biggest accomplishments is making enemies out of everybody, something they’ve just reinforced by attacking a Russian airplane, a Shiite neighborhood in Beirut and a major Western capital in quick succession), it is notable that with reference to the attacks in Lebanon, he called on Lebanese not to blame the Syrian refugees in their country, and Lebanon has many times more Syrian refugees than any country in Europe. If only Western right-wingers would show as much sense.

The truth is, if ISIS or other extremist groups based abroad want to launch attacks on the West, it is much easier for them to use local radicals or get into the country as tourists or business travels than to enter as refugees. The idea being promoted by conservative Republicans that Syrian refugees are a threat to the US is absurd. Refugees go through many checks, far more than others who come into the country (not to mention the right-wing radicals like Roof, who are probably more of a danger), and there are virtually no cases of any refugees admitted since 2001 being involved in suspected terrorism in the US. The people of Syria have had to live with attacks like the one in Paris on an almost daily basis for several years now, and yet some people’s response when they come seeking refuge is to turn them away on the unlikely chance that a minuscule fraction of them may be terrorists, or to only admit those belonging to a particular religion? It’s not only ridiculous, it’s frankly disgusting, and I’m glad that US President Barack Obama didn’t mince words in criticizing such calls. It would be just as logical to stop allowing Norwegians into the US on the off chance that one might be like Breivik, or to stop allowing Christians because they might be like Joseph Kony. To call for stopping all Syrian or Muslim refugees from entering the US or other Western countries, one would have to be ignorant, cowardly, or morally bankrupt – or some combination of the three. When we stand in solidarity with the people of Paris – and Beirut – we should also speak out strongly against those among us who are playing into the hands of ISIS by making this out to be a conflict between the West and Muslims in general. This is not a fight against “radical Islam”, it’s a fight against all violent and hateful groups, whatever their religion or ethnic origin, including any who threaten violence against peaceful Muslims or refugees in the West.

A final note on Paris: Lest it be forgotten, at the end of this month leaders from around the world will be meeting there to address climate change. Not only are the terror attacks not a reason to delay or reduce the scope of the meeting, they actually should be an extra incentive to take action. After all, as I have talked about before and others such as US presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have noted, there is a direct link between climate change and the Syrian civil war via the severe drought the country suffered in the years leading up to it, creating mass unemployment, internal migration, instability and suffering that helped fuel the discontent that Assad’s bloody response to turned into a full scale rebellion. If we don’t do something about climate change, even more suffering and instability will no doubt create even more conflict, with radical groups of whatever ideology feeding off of it. We’ll have to hope that the world leaders meeting in Paris fully understand this and it helps push them to agree on real steps to deal with climate change.

Another significant news item is the national elections that took place in Turkey and Myanmar (Burma). In Turkey, regrettably, the AKP, the party of the country’s nationalist and increasingly authoritarian leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, regained its parliamentary majority, having lost it in the elections in June. Erdogan first hindered efforts to create a coalition government, making new elections necessary, and then he openly campaigned for the AKP, both actions contrary to his position as the supposedly neutral president of the country. What’s more, he instigated an unjustified conflict with Kurdish rebels in order to inflame nationalist passions. Despite all this, it shouldn’t be overlooked that Erdogan’s victory, while unexpected by the pollsters, was not as overwhelming as many headlines might lead one to believe. The AKP won just under 50% vote, far more than they deserved to get, but still less than an absolute majority. While they won a sizable majority of seats, they still fell short of a supermajority, so Erdogan will only be able to make the constitutional changes he wants (such as, naturally, strengthening the power of the president) if he can get some cooperation from other parties. The party which saw the greatest reduction in votes and seats was the right-wing nationalist MHP, a group at least as bad as the AKP. The more left-leaning CHP, the biggest opposition party, actually gained two seats and saw a slight increase in votes. The Kurdish party HDP lost a considerable number of votes and seats, but not nearly as many as the MHP, despite being demonized by the AKP as being associated with Kurdish rebel groups and having turnout in its strongholds reduced by the conflict engineered by Erdogan, not to mention having a peace rally attended by many of its activists targeted in the deadliest terrorist attack ever in modern Turkey. Also it should be remembered that the performance of the HDP in the June elections was also a surprise to many observers, so their performance this time was closer to what had been expected in June. So really the AKP didn’t get a victory as sweeping as they might have, considering that the election was considered “unfair” by many neutral observers. Still, it was a disappointing result. We can only hope that Erdogan and the AKP are not able to do too much more damage to Turkish democracy and relations with the country’s Kurdish minority before the next election, and that enough Turkish voters choose to reject the AKP when the time comes.

Another election was held this past weekend in Myanmar (Burma), the first in which control of the government was at stake. Before it relaxed its grip on power, the military dictatorship which had previously ruled Burma drew up a constitution which reserved a quarter of the seats in parliament for military appointees, kept key ministries (including, of course, defense) in military hands, and gave the military the right to take over under certain circumstances. They also included a provision barring anyone who had been married to a foreign national from the presidency, written specifically to prevent opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose late husband was British, from becoming president. This election was the first for which all of the non-military seats in parliament were up for grabs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won an overwhelming victory, winning the vast majority of contested seats, enough to gain an absolute majority. Unlike after the last freely contested elections in 1990, also won by the NLD in a landslide, this time the military seems to be willing to accept the results. Considering the military’s still substantial power, the NLD will still have to reach some accommodation with them; while changing the constitution to reduce the military’s power and allow Suu Kyi to become president might be a possibility, it would have to be done with care, lest the military decide to seize absolute power again. There’s also the awkward situation that will prevail in the meantime, in which Suu Kyi will be the clear leader of the ruling party and the dominant individual in the government but cannot hold the position of highest formal authority in the country. But the real test for Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD is not how they deal with the military, but whether they finally start acting to protect Myanmar’s Muslim minority, particularly the persecuted Rohingya. Unfortunately, their record so far in this regard is poor; the NLD didn’t even field a single Muslim candidate. While some extremist Buddhist monks even accused Suu Kyi and the NLD of being “Islamist” because they are not sufficiently Islamophobic, the unfortunate truth is that Suu Kyi has remain mostly silent on the almost genocidal oppression the Rohingya have been subjected to. Will she act differently now that she has real power? That remains to be seen.

Lastly, there was the recent meeting between Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou and Chinese president Xi Jinping. While Western media sources tended to play up the significance of the meeting, it really didn’t amount to much. Here’s part of a comment I posted about it on one of the articles: "Ma's main purpose in having this meeting was to boost the poor prospects of the KMT in next year's elections, and if that doesn't work, to undermine the future DPP government by setting bad precedents through talk of "one China", a concept most Taiwanese don't subscribe to. Given his extremely poor poll standing and virtual lame duck status, his actions shouldn't be seen as representing Taiwan or its people. China's government and its supporters always claim that people on both sides want China and Taiwan to unify. This is probably true of people in China, given the decades of nationalist propaganda people there have had to swallow, but in Taiwan most of the "one China" propaganda has been ditched and most Taiwanese don't want to unify with China. If China really believes its own claims that Taiwanese do want to be part of China, then they shouldn't have any objection to Taiwan having a referendum on the subject. It's because they know that unification would not win that they threaten violence if such a vote was held.... Maybe Ma Ying-jeou really wants to be Chinese. In that case he is free to move to China when he leaves office. But Taiwan's fate is up to the Taiwanese to decide. Anyone else with any sense of justice will support their right to self-determination. As for those Chinese who thanks to the nationalistic education they have received can't let go of the idea that Taiwan is China's, they should ask themselves, why should it really matter to them personally what Taiwan's status is? If Taiwanese don't share your loyalty to the idea of "China", do you really think you can or should force them to? Everyone should be free to live as they wish, as long as they don't interfere with the freedom of others -- which is what China is doing by trying to force unification on an unwilling Taiwan."

Despite this apparent attempt by Ma to boost the KMT’s candidate in the race to succeed him, polls afterwards showed that it didn’t help, and most people were not impressed with the meeting itself. While there is still some time to go before the election, there seems to be a very good chance that the KMT will lose the presidency and possibly even its legislative majority, which has not happened since the KMT fled to Taiwan in 1949. While the DPP is far from perfect – one reason I hoping that one or more of the left-leaning third parties such as the Green Party do well – it would be good to see the KMT finally lose power in Taiwan.