&#8220;Dozens&#8221; of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong have been arrested in a &#8220;sweeping crackdown&#8221; &#8212; the first mass arrest under a &#8220;national security law&#8221; passed in China allowing Chinese security forces to operate within the city-state.
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/06/dozens-of-hong-kong-pro-democracy-figures-arrested-in-sweeping-crackdown">The Guardian reports</a> that &#8220;more than 50 pro-democracy politicians and campaigners have been arrested in early morning raids in Hong Kong, in an unprecedented crackdown by authorities on the opposition in the region.&#8221;
&#8220;The sweeping arrests on Wednesday morning came without warning, and shocked observers. It is the largest single mass arrest of people under the national security law (NSL), and appeared to relate to just a singular event: the holding of democratic votes,&#8221; the outlet continues.
The Guardian notes that most of those picked up are activists, legal scholars, and aspiring legislators who held primaries to find candidates to compete in an upcoming Hong Kong legislative council election. Those primaries drew more than 600,000 votes; Hong Kong has a population of just 7 million.
&#8220;Campaigners had been aiming for 35 seats – a majority in the legislative council,&#8221; the outlet says. &#8220;Among those named as arrested were former lawmakers Helena Wong, Lam Cheuk-ting, Chu Hoi-dick, and Leung Kwok-Hung, as well as co-organizers of the polls – <a class="u-underline" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/14/hong-kong-primaries-china-declares-pro-democracy-polls-illegal" data-link-name="in body link">legal scholar Benny Tai</a> and pollster Robert Chung, <a class="u-underline" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/11/hong-kong-pollster-raided-by-police-amid-security-law-crackdown" data-link-name="in body link">whose office was raided</a> just days prior.&#8221;
The primaries are, ultimately, unofficial; Hong Kong&#8217;s pro-Chinese chief executive, Carrie Lam, postponed the city-state&#8217;s official elections &#8220;indefinitely&#8221; claiming that residents of Hong Kong faced a significant risk of contracting the novel coronavirus through the act of voting.
It turns out, unofficial or not, daring to oppose China&#8217;s exercise of power within Hong Kong through purely democratic means is a threat to Chinese superiority. &#8220;At the time of the primaries, the Hong Kong government claimed it had received complaints that the poll might have &#8216;interfered with and manipulated&#8217; the election and that by pledging to win a majority of seats in order to block government bills candidates and campaigners had potentially violated the NSL.&#8221;
Beijing reportedly accused those who organized the primaries of collaborating with foreign governments seeking to challenge China, and that was enough to trigger the &#8220;National Security Law&#8221; that China passed in reference to Hong Kong last June. That law allows China to enter Hong Kong to arrest those who engage in &#8220;secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.&#8221;
Carrie Lam suggested, in a statement late last year, that while competing in elections was not necessarily an act of terrorism or a threat to national security, but that the group of activists sought to capture enough seats in the legislative council to stall pro-Chinese legislation. That, she said, was &#8220;potentially subversive.&#8221;
A police source told Chinese state-run media that activists &#8220;were arrested on suspicion of subversion.&#8221;
None of those arrested will be allowed out on bail, suggesting that China may be planning to detain them indefinitely.
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So much of the current narrative driven by the Left insists that America is some “racist, fascist state” bent on oppressing many of its citizens in perpetuity. As a result, extremist notions championed by Antifa and BLM activists has gained tremendous traction in recent months. But when compared with actual state-sponsored brutality and oppression in places like China and elsewhere, this prevailing narrative is exposed as hyperbole. In reality, so much of the social unrest and virulent activism in our nation is a product of a staggering amount of moral and cognitive dissonance. Here are eight ongoing crises occurring around the world that are truly worthy of public outcry and condemnation.
1. Despotism in Belarus
The Left assails President Trump as some “fascist” with no real evidence outside of hysterics. Alexander Lukashenko, however, is very much a dictator since taking over Belarus in 1994 and is wholly deserving of international censure.
“After he won election,” The <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/belarus-protests-alexander-lukashenko-faces-democratic-uprising/">National Review</a> details, “he quickly turned Belarus — which had enjoyed democracy for a scant three years — into a personal fief. He took control of the courts, the banks, the universities, and so on. The Belarusian intelligence agency works for him, strictly. Charmingly, it is the only such agency in the post–Soviet Union to retain the old name: ‘KGB.’”
Often referred to as “the last dictator in Europe,” Lukashenko considers democracy “hare-brained” and continues to quell it at every opportunity.
Writing for <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/international/518121-russian-forces-are-now-in-belarus">The Hill</a>, Frederick Kagan adds: “There is no doubt that Lukashenko is a dictator. He stole the most recent election, he suppressed peaceful protesters, and expelled or imprisoned opposition leaders.”
Lukashenko’s barbarism is most evident against his own people who have risen in opposition by the thousands in legitimate protest against the dictator.
The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53773534">BBC reports</a> that detained protestors were “lying on the floor of a detention centre, piled on top of each other, in a pool of blood and excrement. They were not allowed to use the toilet for hours on end or even change position.”
2. The ongoing genocide in China
In a bold and courageous move, the Trump administration is considering a formal declaration of genocide as China’s Marxist regime continues to commit untold atrocities against the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/china-forces-imprisoned-uighurs-to-work-in-factories-for-apple-nike-amid-coronavirus-crisis">Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang</a>.
In a statement given to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/trump-administration-chinas-oppression-uighur-muslims-genocide-report">Fox News</a>, the White House National Security Council presented its case in no uncertain terms:
“Beijing’s atrocities against the Uighurs include horrific acts against women including forced abortion, forced sterilization and other coercive birth control methods, state-sponsored forced labor, sexual violence including through rape in detention, compulsory home-stays by Han officials, and forced marriages…The Chinese Communist Party’s atrocities also include the largest incarceration of an ethnic minority since World War II.”
The situation remains dire and is fast beginning to echo atrocities of the past as “More than a million Uighurs are believed to be held” in concentration camps, according to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/25/trump-administration-china-genocide-uighurs-401581">Politico</a>:
“White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien has <a href="https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-security-adviser-decries-world-silence-china-camps">accused</a> China’s communist leaders of running  ‘concentration camps’ for Uighurs in Xinjiang, a northwestern province home to millions of Uighurs. A member of a United Nations human rights panel said in 2018 that China had ‘turned the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internment camp,’ where people are held without charge and little recourse to get legal representation to be released.”
The Chinese regime continues to deny any wrongdoing as an avalanche of evidence mounts against them and as the genocide continues virtually unabated. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/china-has-built-380-internment-camps-in-xinjiang-study-finds?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1">The Guardian</a> recently reported, “China has built nearly 400 internment camps in Xinjiang region.”
Meanwhile, many on the Left including the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/khan-hypocrisy-on-china-haunts-nbas-woke-restart">NBA</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/toto-ask-no-questions-shows-horrors-of-communist-china-lebron-james-should-take-notice">Hollywood</a> remain silent on the atrocities and continue to do the biddings of the Chinese government while accusing America of imagined crimes such as systemic racism and “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/khan-a-closer-look-at-the-lefts-flawed-white-privilege-narrative">white privilege</a>.”
3. Slavery in parts of Africa
Far from being some pockmark of the past, slavery continues to exist in many parts of the world. It remains most prevalent in parts of Africa, with some Arab states close behind.
“Slavery was especially prevalent in Eritrea and Mauritania,” <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1333946/global-slavery-index-africa-has-the-highest-rate-of-modern-day-slavery-in-the-world/">Quartz</a> reported, “where slavery has even been, at times, an institutionalized practice. In Eritrea, for instance, the one-party state of president Isaias Afwerki has overseen a notorious national conscription service accused of drafting citizens for an indefinite period, contributing to the wave of refugees <a href="https://qz.com/1215813/photos-eritrea-and-sudan-migrants-paint-faces-white-to-protest-rwanda-deportation/">fleeing the country</a>. Workers that have claimed that they were <a href="https://qz.com/794955/eritrean-workers-are-suing-nevsun-resources-a-canadian-mining-company-for-using-them-as-forced-labor/">forced to work</a> in the nation’s first modern mine are also <a href="https://qz.com/803732/eritrean-forced-labor-workers-will-be-able-to-sue-canadas-nevsun-mining-company-in-british-columbia-court/">currently suing</a> the Vancouver-based mining company Nevsun that owns a majority stake in the mine.”
Slavery is most commonplace in Mauritania where it has yet to be abolished and where “slave status” is often “inherited.”
Globally, slavery remains a profound crisis, according to <a href="https://time.com/longform/african-slave-trade/">Time</a>, and not some “relic of history.” In fact, “there are more than three times as many people in forced servitude today as were captured and sold during the 350-year span of the transatlantic slave trade.” Slavery also continues to be a highly profitable endeavor in the underworld, “earning criminal networks $150 billion a year.”
4. The humanitarian crisis in Yemen
As a Saudi-led coalition continues to besiege Yemen due, in part, to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_Civil_War_(2014%E2%80%93present)">country’s ongoing civil war</a>, a staggering humanitarian crisis has emerged:
“[S]ince the start of the year,” <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/06/1065292">UN News</a> reports, “some 80,000 more people were forced from their homes, bringing the total displaced to almost four million; cholera continues to threaten lives with 110,000 people contracting it so far this year; and recent floods have raised the risk of malaria and dengue fever.”
Even more tragic, 85,000 children and counting have now died from starvation as the Saudi-led coalition has “strangled civilian access to food, fuel, aid and commercial goods,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/21/yemen-young-children-dead-starvation-disease-save-the-children">The Guardian</a> reported in late 2018.
5. The end of freedom in Hong Kong
Protesters in Hong Kong continue to struggle for the very freedom the Left takes for granted here in our nation under the oppressive onslaught of the Chinese regime. According to <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/hong-kong-freedom">City Journal</a>, hope remains at a premium:
“Beijing has now acted to impose a new security law on Hong Kong, turning its back on the ‘one country, two systems’ agreement to which it had committed when the former British colony returned to Chinese control in 1997. Hong Kong will be subject to the same sort of draconian infringements on liberty as mainland China, following a year of street protests demanding just the opposite.”
China’s despotic will against the people of Hong Kong now means an end to “free markets and individual liberties.” The erosion of freedoms set to ensue also includes severe restrictions on “churches, synagogues, museums, charities, and independent private schools.”
The <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/hong-kong-protesters-fight-for-ideals-that-built-civilization/">National Review</a> doesn’t mince words when discussing the current dire state of affairs in Hong Kong:
“China’s goal is to emphatically crush all dissent and any hint of free speech in Hong Kong. It even seeks to muzzle companies in the West that do business with China and Hong Kong. In other words, Hong Kong’s Western-style freedoms and institutions are coming to an end.”
6. The collapse of Syria
Almost a decade of civil war has decimated Syria. <a href="https://www.heritage.org/index/country/syria?version=145">The Heritage Foundation</a> offers a brief overview of Bashar al-Assad’s inglorious rise to power as well as the consequences of the war:
“The Assad family has ruled Syria since Hafez al-Assad’s military coup in 1970. Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father in 2000 but failed to keep his promises to open the socialist economy and ease political repression. A brutal crackdown after 2011’s Arab Spring protests sparked an armed uprising against Assad that by 2012 had become a sectarian civil war between the predominantly Sunni rebels and the Alawite-dominated regime. Assad’s regime, supported by Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah, has largely defeated the fractured armed opposition. The conflict has killed more than 500,000 Syrians and driven nearly 5.5 million refugees out of the country. Syria’s economy declined by more than 70 percent from 2010 to 2017.”
While the brutal civil war is all but over, a hard and treacherous road lies ahead for the Syrian people under Bashar al-Assad including a collapsed economy and a country in ruins.
“President Bashar al-Assad, who has mostly won Syria’s civil war,” according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/world/middleeast/syria-economy-assad-makhlouf.html">The New York Times</a>, “now faces an acute economic crisis that has impoverished his people, brought about the collapse of the currency and fueled a rare public rift in the ruling elite.”
The authoritarian grip al-Assad relied upon to crush his opposition is proving ineffectual in the face of Syria’s economic woes now that “he cannot bomb his way out” of the crisis. Worse, “[a]n estimated 80 percent of Syrians live in poverty” only adding to the very real potential of Syria becoming a failed state.
7. The emergence of alleged concentration camps in Tibet
Tibet’s long and arduous struggle for independence from China is <a href="https://time.com/longform/dalai-lama-60-year-exile/">well-documented</a>. <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/xi-orders-increased-tibet-repression-to-fight-splittism/">The National Review</a> provides a concise summary:
“Tibet has been under this hegemonic boot since China invaded the country in 1950. But despite decades of repression, Tibetan Buddhism has not yet yielded to its own destruction, and indeed, the country continues to resist the occupiers. Now, the tyrant Xi Jinping has ordered his brutalizing forces to redouble their efforts to crush the supposed Buddhist threat…”
Now allegations have emerged that China’s Marxist regime is forcing Tibetans into concentration camps in a manner identical to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, as detailed by <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-forces-500-000-tibetans-into-labour-camps-20200922-p55xyk.html">The Sydney Morning Herald</a>:
“New evidence suggests the Chinese government now has a large-scale mandatory ‘vocational training’ program in Tibet, pushing more than 500,000 rural labourers into recently built military-style training centres in the first seven months of this year alone.”
The evidence also includes “enforced indoctrination, intrusive surveillance, and harsh punishments” against the Tibetan people.
8. Venezuela continues to implode under Socialist rule
Venezuela embodies the failures of socialism to a fatiguing degree. Corruption is legion and the economy continues to plummet with seemingly no end in sight. <a href="https://www.heritage.org/index/country/venezuela?version=1022">The Heritage Foundation</a> reports:
“Venezuela’s modern democratic era lasted from the end of military rule in 1959 until the election of Hugo Chávez in 1999. His successor, Nicolás Maduro, completed the destruction of democratic institutions and established a repressive authoritarian dictatorship in 2017. The deeply corrupt socialist government’s policies have caused hyperinflation and severe shortages of basic goods that have led to one of the worst economic contractions in history and Latin America’s worst migration crisis.”
Most recently, Maduro has now defined anyone with possible exposure to COVID-19 a “bioterrorist,” according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/world/americas/coronavirus-venezuela.html">The New York Times</a>, and is wielding his oppressive might “by deploying his repressive security apparatus” against his own people in some vain, draconian attempt to combat the novel virus.
“In commandeered hotels, disused schools and cordoned-off bus stations,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/world/americas/coronavirus-venezuela.html">The New York Times</a> reports, “Venezuelans returning home from other countries in Latin America are being forced into crowded rooms with limited food, water or masks. And they are being held under military guard for weeks or months for coronavirus tests or treatment with unproven medications, according to interviews with the detainees, videos they have taken on their cellphones and government documents.”
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

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