The Week USA - 09.08.2019

Best columns: International^ NEWS^15

COLOMBIA

CANADA

We Colombians are a bloodthirsty lot, said Carlos

Castillo Cardona. In 2016, our government signed

a peace deal with FARC, the leftist guerrillas whose

five-decade-long insurgency claimed some 220,

lives. Yet the violence continues. A systematic purge

of left-wing activists and community leaders is now

underway. In the past three years, more than 700

have been killed, presumably by right-wing para-

militaries fighting for control of drug routes and

wildcat mines. Another 135 former FARC militants

have also been picked off. Our culture fuels this

slaughter. Instead of trying to change a person’s

way of thinking, Colombians would rather reach

for the gun. This phenomenon of “destroying by

death and not by ideas is the basis of our history,”

dating back to the 19th century and our fight for

independence from Spain. Since then, we’ve had

numerous civil wars and guerrilla conflicts. Even

“our mode of teaching is based on punishment,

rather than education.” In raising our children, we

use “violence as a corrective”—at street markets,

you can even buy special rods with which to beat

your children. Our leaders should invest in crime

prevention but find it easier to enact laws that im-

pose ever greater punishments. Until we overcome

this brutal cultural trait, we will never have peace.

Trump-style nationalism is coming to Canada,

said Meagan Campbell. Maxime Bernier of the

right-wing People’s Party of Canada has unveiled a

campaign platform for the October parliamentary

elections studded with proposals to put Canadians

first. Bernier has promised to build a fence along

the border with the U.S. to keep out illegal im-

migrants. He pledges to slash the intake of legal

immigrants and refugees to some 150,000 a year,

far below the 350,000 target of Prime Minister Jus-

tin Trudeau’s ruling Liberal Party. Bernier says he

will also outlaw what he calls “birth tourism”—in

which pregnant foreigners give birth in Canada to

secure their child citizenship—and require aspiring
immigrants to submit to in-person interviews “to
assess the extent to which they align with Canadian
values.” Bernier is quick to say that his agenda isn’t
racist; indeed, he says racists are not welcome in his
party. It’s just that “we cannot be the welfare state
of the planet,” he insists. Before he revealed his
new anti-immigrant proposals this week, Bernier’s
libertarian-leaning party was polling at 3 percent,
but the new stump speech is bringing shouts of
“Amen!” and “Thank you, Maxime!” His pitch is
the polar opposite of Trudeau’s slogan, “Diversity is
AP our strength.” Which one will Canadians embrace?

Cursed with

a culture

of killing

Carlos Castillo Cardona

El Tiempo

Will populism

take root

here too?

Meagan Campbell

National Post

Hong Kong is suffering from a “com-

plete breakdown of law and order,”

said Yonden Lhatoo in the Hong

Kong–based South China Morning

Post. Every week for the past two

months, hundreds of thousands of

people have taken to the streets to

protest a bill that would let residents

of our semi-autonomous city be extra-

dited to face trial in mainland Chinese

courts. The rallies started peacefully

but now routinely end in violence.

Sometimes the black-clad protesters

are the victims, as when hundreds

of white-shirted thugs and gangsters

wielding iron bars attacked demonstrators at a train station last

month. At least 45 people ended up in the hospital. More often,

the protesters are at fault. “All hell broke loose” when an elderly

man slapped at a protester’s placard at the airport last week.

Video shows the mob screaming obscenities at the old man and

pushing him. Some Hong Kongers wonder why the police aren’t

doing more—either to defend or arrest protesters—but officers

are pelted with rocks when they show up at demonstrations. The

protesters have “systematically stripped our police force of its au-

thority and credibility, demoralized frontline officers with constant

abuse and bullying, and urinated all over the rule of law.”

Lack of leadership is leading to anarchy, said the Morning Post

in an editorial. Protesters sprayed graffiti last week on Beijing’s

liaison office in the city and splashed black paint on the national

emblem. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam called that at-

tack “a flagrant challenge to China’s sovereignty” and a “deliber-

ate test” of the “one country, two

systems” principle that the former

British colony has followed since it

returned to Chinese control in 1997.

But Lam is at fault for failing to ad-

dress protesters’ demands. While she

declared the extradition bill “dead,”

she hasn’t withdrawn it, and the

protesters now want more, including

an inquiry into police brutality. Lam

can’t “stand by and expect others

to solve a problem that is ultimately

of her government’s making.” She

should take a lesson from France,

said the Hong Kong Economic

Times. The Yellow Vest protest movement erupted there last year

over a new fuel tax, and riots paralyzed Paris every weekend for

months. The protests finally subsided after French President Em-

manuel Macron “promised the people reforms.” Young Hong

Kongers are furious about rocketing rents—many live in tiny,

illegally divided apartments—and low wages. Address those com-

plaints, and the people might leave the street.

The radicals are playing a dangerous game, said the Beijing-

based Global Times. They want to topple Lam and “establish an

opposition-dominated political structure manipulated by the U.S.

and Western forces.” That will never happen. Beijing is not send-

ing in the army, because Hong Kong is responsible for its internal

order, and the Hong Kong people will eventually become “fed up

with turbulence.” But these riots have provided mainlanders with

a useful “negative example, demonstrating how fragile social soli-

darity is under the Western system.”

China: How to quell the Hong Kong protests

Demonstrators clash with Hong Kong police.