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dictatorship

Thursday June 23, 2022

June 23, 2022 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 23, 2022

Rwanda is a brutal, repressive regime. Holding the Commonwealth summit there is a sham

Back when I was a reporter based in Africa in the 1990s, there were two organisations whose meetings regularly took place amid widespread media indifference: the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Commonwealth.

August 12, 2005

There were solid reasons for our lack of enthusiasm. Such get-togethers were strong on pomp and rigmarole, but the interesting decisions usually took place behind closed doors. Both organisations were widely seen as little more than dictators’ clubs, attuned to the interests of ruling elites while aloof from the millions of citizens they nominally represented.

The Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Kigali, Rwanda this week will do nothing to challenge those assumptions.

Held in a country primed to receive Britain’s unwanted migrants – a deal that even Prince Charles, who will be chairing for the first time, apparently regards as “appalling” – the meeting will highlight the weaknesses of the organisation on which Britain is pinning its hopes of future global relevance.

In the run-up to the EU referendum, Brexiters talked up the benefits of ditching the EU in favour of a market that – thanks to the vastness of Britain’s defunct empire – holds 2.5 billion consumers, a third of the global population. And, since Brexit, it is true that free-trade agreements have been signed with Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, while a host of other deals are being negotiated with members of the 54-nation association.

September 25, 2012

But the Commonwealth, like the EU, aims to be more than a trading bloc. Supporters talk about a “values-based organisation”. Its nominal belief in individual liberty, the democratic process, the rule of law and the importance of civil society were enshrined in both the Harare Declaration in 1991 and a Commonwealth charter adopted in 2012. Rwanda’s hosting of Chogm exposes a gaping hole where delivery should be.

Kigali will certainly look fantastic. The city where Hutu militiamen once hacked Tutsi families to death at roadblocks has been transformed into a gleaming conference hub. The flowerbeds have been meticulously weeded, every kerb will have been freshly painted, there won’t be a homeless person in sight.

But the explanation for that latter detail – before important get-togethers, the government relocates homeless people to “transit centres” for “reeducation” – highlights why the choice of Rwanda sends out nothing but worrying signals about where the Commonwealth is heading.

Rwanda is one the most repressive nations in Africa. It may be a “donor darling” whose oft-vaunted development indicators impress outsiders, but it is also a claustrophobic police state premised on violence. The president, Paul Kagame, routinely wins elections with more than 90% of the vote. The Rwandan government muzzles the press and human rights activists and opposition leaders are killed or jailed, or simply “disappear”.

October 8, 2013

Kagame not only has a terrible human rights record at home, he has for decades cynically exported instability to Africa’s great lakes region. Whatever the truth about the 1994 downing of a plane carrying two African presidents – former colleagues have publicly accused Kagame of ordering the attack that triggered the genocide, which he denies – Kagame certainly created and armed the rebel movement that toppled the president of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko. It went on to slaughter tens of thousands of Hutu refugees in the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). His troops hoovered up diamonds, coltan, gold, timber and coffee, which were then passed off as Rwandan produce – in what Jim Freedman, who worked on a UN Group of Experts report on DRC mineral resources, described to me as “a national money-making effort”.

Ten years ago, western donors cut aid to Rwanda because of its obvious support for M23, a rebel movement terrorising eastern DRC. Shockingly, M23 has been on the rampage again in the buildup to Chogm. Prince Charles, the Duchess of Cornwall and Boris Johnson will be toasting Kagame’s statesmanship less than a day’s drive from a region where this proxy force and Congolese army units are blasting away at one another, sending tens of thousands of villagers fleeing for their lives.

September 6, 2019

Rwanda’s appetite for intervention is not limited to its neighbours. Permanently insecure, Kagame has overseen a regime that hunted down former generals, spy chiefs and advisers who fled into exile. His intelligence services’ assassinations and attempted hits have been staged not only in Africa but in the west. The US group Freedom House last week described Rwanda as “one of the most prolific perpetrators of transnational repression in the world”.

We can take it as read that very few of these ugly facts will be aired during Chogm, so skilled has Kagame proved at making himself useful abroad. For years he traded a willingness to dispatch Rwandan peacekeepers to conflict zones for international respect as “Africa’s policeman” – a deeply ironic bargain, given his simultaneous support for militias destabilising the DRC. Now his readiness to accept the west’s unwanted migrants – Denmark may soon be striking a similar deal to Britain’s – wins him a new free pass.

Last year, at a UN human rights conference in Geneva, British officials robustly called out Rwanda on its record of extrajudicial killings, disappearances and torture. Once the asylum-seekers deal was signed the tone abruptly changed, with Johnson praising Rwanda as “one of the safest destinations in Africa”, while Priti Patel talked admiringly of a country where refugees could “prosper and thrive”.

June 10, 2022

A Commonwealth that took its own charter seriously would have reached out to those who have been domestically silenced: jailed bloggers and citizen journalists, for example. An international coalition of 24 human rights and journalist groups has formally called on heads of government to press for detainees to be freed and for guarantees that Rwandan media and civil society will be allowed to work freely during and after Chogm.

But the Hutu opposition leader, Victoire Ingabire, whose jailing prevented her running in presidential elections, has seen her requests to attend the civil society events running alongside the main meetings stubbornly ignored. “It seems the people at the Commonwealth are collaborating with the government of Rwanda to exclude me,” she said. Chogm in Kigali, it seems, will faithfully reflect its unaccountable, exclusionary host state.

Thanks to Covid, which forced Chogm to be twice postponed, the Commonwealth actually had two years in which it could have credibly announced an alternative venue to Kigali. But that would have required something approaching a backbone. As it is, the organisation has certainly shown itself to be a “values-based” organisation; they just aren’t the values many of its billions of citizens share. (Michela Wrong – The Guardian) 

 

Posted in: International Tagged: Boris Yeltsin, Commonwealth, dictatorship, diplomacy, International, Justin Trudeau, Paul Kagame, Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth, Rwanda

Tuesday January 29, 2019

February 5, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Look! It’s animated! Regular version is here.

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday January 29, 2019

‘Debacle’ with China latest foreign policy flub for Trudeau, says Scheer

The “debacle” over the firing of Canada’s ambassador to China is the latest in a string of foreign-policy failures for the prime minister, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer charged on Monday.

January 24, 2019

Scheer also cited Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s controversial photo-op-filled trip to India last winter, said Trudeau made “concession after concession” on the trade front to U.S. President Donald Trump, and frustrated Japan and Australia when Canada didn’t immediately sign on to a rebooted Trans-Pacific Partnership in late 2017.

“It’s clear that the prime minister’s foreign policy is a disaster and Canadians are paying for his mistakes,” Scheer said in the first question of the government in the newly constructed House of Commons in the West Block of Parliament Hill.

The final sitting of Parliament before this fall’s federal election opened with the Liberals on the defensive, following Trudeau’s decision on Friday to fire ambassador John McCallum.

The move came after a turbulent week that saw McCallum — an experienced cabinet minister who was parachuted into a sensitive diplomatic job with Canada’s second-largest trading partner — go off script in Canada’s efforts to win the release of two men imprisoned by the People’s Republic after Canada arrested a Chinese telecommunications executive.

February 22, 2018

“After clowning around in India and inviting a convicted terrorist along with him, he then was forced to take concession after concession from Donald Trump. He even angered our partners in Japan and Australia. And now we have the debacle with China. Why did the prime minister show such weakness and wait so long to fire his ambassador?” Scheer demanded.

Trudeau sidestepped the question and reiterated taking points about how the government is devoted to the rule of law and remains committed to marshalling international support to win the release of the two Canadians and seek clemency for a third man facing a death sentence on drug charges.

Earlier Monday, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said McCallum was fired because he didn’t toe the government’s line in the current China crisis. (Continued: Globe & Mail) 

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: 2019-03, bully, Canada, China, dictatorship, diplomacy, GIF, Huawei, John McCallum, Justin Trudeau

Wednesday June 26, 2008

June 26, 2008 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 26, 2008

Mugabe believes he’s `appointed by God’

As African and Western countries struggle to find a plan to remove Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe – before he declares himself winner of an uncontested election Friday – the aging strongman is turning on his people with renewed ferocity.

Observers are calling it the last thrash of a regime that has beaten, starved and murdered Zimbabweans for years. And observers say the violence may continue even if he is ousted.

Mugabe, 84 and reportedly in poor health, considers himself “appointed by God,” and says he will never give up power. But he is under increasing pressure from his neighbours to step down.

Before a meeting of the United Nations Security Council yesterday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Mugabe to abandon the runoff election, after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew his name and took shelter in the Netherlands embassy in Harare, saying he wanted to avoid deadly reprisals against his supporters.

“There has been too much violence and too much intimidation,” Ban told reporters. “A vote held in these conditions would lack all legitimacy.”

A draft statement tabled by Britain asked the council to give “full support” to Tsvangirai, in the absence of a legitimate runoff. In the first round of voting in March, his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won a parliamentary victory, but the electoral commission said he had too few votes to win the presidency outright. (Source: Toronto Star) 

Commentary by Graeme MacKay, June 27, 2008

Summer is the time for international cartoons, among other subjects I’ve written about on this blog. Here and here and here, too. Throughout the year I tend to draw on local and national events before I’ll consider drawing on other stuff going on in the world. There are regions of the world where I deliberately stay away from commenting on because the complexity of certain situations simply baffles me. The situation around Israel is a prime example. Perhaps when I was newer at cartooning I’d attempt to do something on the whatever peace process was being negotiated upon between Israel and the Palestinians. Now, however, I’ve joined others who may be fatigued by it all and wondering why such a tiny piece of the planet gets so much attention.

By comparison, the political situation in Zimbabwe is so uncomplex it makes it so easy to comment on. Having a despot control any country in the 21st century makes for an easy target for editorial cartoonists. The degree to which they cling to power makes it even easier.

In Mugabe’s case, it’s not just how he clings to power that is so outrageous, it’s the fact that he clings to the one noble ideal that energized him to rally the black majority of Rhodesia … 40 years ago, when Zimbabwe was controlled by a white minority of British colonialists (before reforms brought in by Ian Smith). He courageously fought against minority rule, and spent time in jail for his outspokeness, much like Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Consequently, he became a hero and rose to become leader of a new nation in the horn of Africa in 1980.

It sounds like the foundation of what could have been the rise of a great African hero, doesn’t it? But from the start to the conclusion of the 2008 election of Mugabe’s reign over Zimbabwe tactics of violent intimidation have been so blatantly used to keep him in power. The expropriation of white owned farms, disasterious economic policies leading to unbelieveable inflation, food shortages, oil shortages, internal displacement and starvation are all part of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. The best he can do to deal with these problems is to harken back to the one ideal he started with 40 years ago — that it’s the colonists fault and now the west is only fueling the problems.

That’s Mugabe’s 28 year reign in a nutshell. Pretty straightforward stuff.

But even now the blaming of Zimbabwe’s problems on colonials, the west, and generally the “white man”, Mugabe has gone to new lengths of legitimizing his power as a God given right. A modern day absolute monarch – the exact same people who sent colonials around to settle far off lands and oppress the people in the name of a king ruling by divine right. Another easy international cartoon, and yet so outrageous it’s actually going on before our eyes.

 

Posted in: International Tagged: Africa, dictatorship, divine, french, God, International, King, mirror, Monarchy, opulence, revolution, right, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe

Friday August 12, 2005

August 12, 2005 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 12, 2005

Report: African famine may worsen

Tens of millions of Africans will continue to go hungry over the next 20 years unless major changes in trade and aid policies are enacted, a report forecasts.

More than 38.3 million children will suffer from malnutrition in 2025 if trends continue, and current policies will do little to improve long-term prospects, the International Food Policy Research Institute predicted in a report.

With millions already suffering from severe food shortages in the semi-arid lands along the Sahara, known as Africa’s Sahel region, the report said the entire continent needed at least $303.2 billion in new investments to reduce hunger.

“Many of the challenges facing Africa’s agricultural sector stem from a few root causes, including poor political and economic governance in many African countries, inadequate funding for the agricultural sector, poor water resources management, and neglect of research and development,” the report said.

The Washington-based institute’s researchers used computer modelling to analyse the effect of different trade, aid and agricultural policies to prepare a forecast for the next 20 years, depending on steps taken at the national and international level. 

If there are no significant changes in the current policies, there will only be a small reduction in the percentage of malnourished children in sub-Saharan Africa from 32.8% to 28.2%. But when population growth is considered, the total number of hungry children will actually rise from 32.7 million to 38.3 million. (Al Jazeera) 

 

Posted in: International Tagged: Africa, architecture, Burkina Faso, dictatorship, famine, International, Mali, Niger, Presidential Palace, starvation, tyranny

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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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