The Washington Post - 02.03.2020

MONDAy, MARCH 2 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ re A

The World

IRAQ

Premier-designate

withdraws from post

Iraq’s prime minister-
designate announced his
withdrawal f rom the post Sunday
after f ailing t o secure
parliamentary s upport for his
cabinet selection, prolonging t he
political d eadlock i n the c ountry
as it confronts economic, health
and s ecurity challenges.
I n an address to the nation
explaining his decision to
withdraw, Mohammed Allawi
accused some political parties of
negotiating “purely for narrow
interests.” He said they “were not
serious about implementing
reforms that they promised to the
people” a nd accused them of
placing obstacles in the way of an
independent government.
Allawi’s withdrawal a month
after h e was selected f or the post
plunges the c ountry i nto more
uncertainty a t a critical time amid
sustained anti-government
demonstrations and t he constant
threat of being ensnared b y
festering U.S.-Iran tensions.
Shortly a fter he s poke, t wo
mortar shells landed i n Baghdad’s
Green Z one, where t he U. S.
Embassy and g overnment o ffices
are located, two security officials
said. No i njuries were reported.
Iraq on Sunday m arked five
months since a popular u prising
against t he country’s political
class erupted in Baghdad and
southern provinces.
Allawi twice failed to secure a
quorum for parliament to meet t o

vote on h is cabinet selection.

With his w ithdrawal, President

Barham Salih has 15 days to

appoint a replacement.

— Associated Press

MEXICO

Gang critic LeBarón

flees threat for U.S.

A prominent member of a

community of U.S.-Mexican dual

citizens living in northern Mexico

that was shattered by the

November massacre of three

women and six children has fled to

the United States after an

apparent threat on his life.

Julián LeBarón, who has long

been outspoken in denouncing

rampant criminal activity in the

area and local authorities’

complicity with gangs, expressed

frustration with continued

insecurity in his corner of a

country that suffered 35,

murders in 2019.

“I think that it’s r eaching a

breaking point. I mean, people are

just sick to death of the criminals,”

he said by phone from Phoenix.

LeBarón said he believes the

threat was related to his refusal to

keep silent and suggested that the

final straw may have been a recent

verbal dust-up with local police.

On Feb. 17, he said, there was a

shootout in Casas Grandes, in

Chihuahua state, where he has a

home, followed by a couple of

apparent grenade detonations

and then more gunfire. The next

day, h e called police to ask about it,

and an officer said they didn’t

know that anything at a ll had

happened. They a rgued, and the

officer hung up on him.

That n ight, LeBarón said, he

received a call at h ome from a

friendly source saying they had

information that La L inea, a gang

that acts as enforcers for the

Juarez cartel, wanted to kill him

and that he needed to get to a safe

place.

LeBarón’s e xtended community

of mostly bilingual American

Mexicans have lived in northern

Mexico for decades and consider

themselves Mormons, though

they are not affiliated with the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-

day Saints.

Dozens of suspects have been

identified, and several were

arrested in the killings of the nine

members of the Mormon

community in November.

— Associated Press

Argentine leader proposes

legalizing elective abortions:

Argentine President A lberto

Fernández announced that he

will send congress a proposal to

legalize voluntary abortion — a n

initiative that was rejected two

years a go. Argentine l aw p ermits

abortions in cases of rape or when

a mother’s l ife is at r isk. But even

many women in t hose conditions

find it difficult t o obtain

abortions. A measure to legalize

elective a bortions cleared the

lower house of congress in 2 018

but f ailed in the Senate.

5 Rohingya reported killed in

army-insurgent clash: At least

five ethnic Rohingya were killed,

including a child, and several were

injured after troops clashed with

insurgents in Myanmar’s c onflict-

torn western state of Rakhine, a

lawmaker and two residents said.

The fighting broke out after

Arakan Army rebels attacked a

military convoy passing the

temple town of Mrauk U, a

regional member of parliament

and a spokesman for the armed

group said. The details of the

attack could not be independently

verified. More than 730,

Rohingya were forced to flee

Rakhine for Bangladesh after a

military crackdown in 2017.

Center-right president takes

office in Uruguay: A right-of-

center president has taken office

in Uruguay, p romising to crack

down on crime and tighten

government finances after a 15-

year string of left-leaning

governments. Luis Lacalle Pou,

son of a former president,

narrowly won election in

November in his second try for the

office. The 46-year-old will have to

depend on an ideologically diverse

four-party c oalition to get his

programs through congress.

— From news services

DIGEST

mIKe HutCHINgs/reuters

A woman wails Sunday as law enforcement officials in Cape To wn, South Africa, disperse a group of

migrants who had occupied a historic church and a square. They were demanding to be moved to another

country, saying they felt unsafe because of xenophobic attacks.

BY SHIBANI MAHTANI

hong kong — Lining up his
camera’s viewfinder as he docu-
mented a protest related to the
coronavirus outbreak, Oscar
Chan noticed a police officer
pointing a canister right back at
him. The pepper spray blasted
the student journalist in the face
as he clicked the shutter.
Three officers surrounded
him as he tried to wash his eye,
Chan said, as their colleague
demanded his arrest. They af-
fixed plastic cuffs so tightly they
left scratches and bruises before
charging him with theft for
possessing a transit card that
provides discounts for the elder-
ly.
“They kept calling me a ‘black
journalist,’ ” said Chan, 24, a
term that implied he was posing
as a reporter. The officer who
had sprayed him berated him
with homophobic slurs and
threatened to rape him, he said.
After widespread unrest in
2019, dissent in Hong Kong is
evolving in the coronavirus era.
With the risk of infection deter-
ring large-scale rallies, at least
temporarily, protests now in-
volve localized, spontaneous
flare-ups or strikes.
But a lack of faith in authori-
ties’ response to the epidemic
has deepened anti-government
sentiment; leader Carrie Lam’s
satisfaction rating is at a record
low, according to the Hong Kong
Public Opinion Research Insti-
tute.
At the Feb. 8 protest Chan
documented, some were com-
memorating a student’s death
following a police operation,
while others were protesting
government plans to establish
quarantine facilities for corona-
virus patients in their neighbor-
hood. Slogans of “five demands,
not one less” — the refrain of
Hong Kong’s democracy move-
ment — mixed with calls for a
“revolution against the virus.”
Confronted with this form of
unrest, Hong Kong’s police, now
clad in surgical masks, are de-
ploying the same response: mass
arrests. Of the more than 7,
people arrested since June, one-
tenth were detained this year,
despite the smaller scale and
frequency of protests. Among
them are student journalists,
civil rights observers, elected
officials and medics.
On Friday, police arrested
Jimmy Lai, a media tycoon
known for his criticism of the
Chinese government, on charges
of unlawful assembly related to a
protest in August. And on Satur-
day, violent protests flared
again, the most serious clashes
between police and protesters in
weeks, leading to the arrest of
121 people.

work that gives the territory

partial autonomy. In February,

Beijing replaced its top official

in Hong Kong with a hard-liner

known f or suppressing Christian

churches in Zhejiang province.

Lawyers and legal scholars say

Hong Kong’s p olice, in seeking to

bolster weak cases in court, are

resorting to extrajudicial evi-

dence-gathering tactics.

Joe Chan, a barrister who is

among a group of pro-bono

lawyers representing arrested

protesters, said clients have

complained that police forced

them to hand over phone pass-

codes — a process that requires a

court warrant under Hong Kong

law.

Clients, he said, have been

asked by police to pose for

evidentiary photos while wear-

ing full-face respirators, helmets

and masks, even if those items

did not belong to them — poten-

tially to implicate a person as

having participated in a protest.

“There is no legal basis for the

police to ask them to do such

things,” Chan said. “We have

complained in open court [about

this practice] a few times.”

Others complain, too, that

police have widened their drag-

net to arrest not only violent

protesters but human rights ob-

servers, journalists, medics and

others, in contravention o f inter-

national standards. Last month,

24 human rights organizations

including Amnesty Internation-

al wrote to Lam, imploring au-

thorities to cease investigations

into human rights observers ar-

rested in recent months.

“Obviously, they’ve changed

their strategy,” Icarus Wong,

founder of Civil Rights Observer,

said of the police, who detained

three of his monitors Jan. 1.

“They’ve made it very clear that

they don’t consider anyone who

is at a protest to be innocent of

wrongdoing.”

Other protesters and civil ob-

servers said the strategy of mass

arrests had made them less will-

ing to take to the streets.

“It is like a yellow card in a

football match,” said Chung, the

district councilor. “It almost

feels like these arrests are pre-

emptive, to make you behave

yourself and stop you from com-

ing out again.”

Chan, the student journalist,

has grown tired of documenting

clashes and is seeking other

ways to support pro-democracy

causes.

“Even if I want to reject the

idea, and pretend that I am not

scared after my arrest, the sim-

ple truth is that [the police

strategy] really works,” he said.

[email protected]

tiffany Liang contributed to this

report.

Blanket arrests await Hong Kong’s coronavirus protesters

As anti-government sentiment grows over authorities’ handling of the epidemic, tactics used by police to quell demonstrations are setting up a new flash point

IsAAC LAwreNCe/AgeNCe FrANCe-Presse/getty ImAges

Police say they are empow-

ered to apprehend any person if

there’s reason to believe they

have committed a crime. In a

statement to the legislature last

week, police added that officers

will “always strive to protect the

privacy and rights of detained

persons.” The force did not re-

spond to questions from The

Washington Post about mass

arrests and treatment of detain-

ees.

The wave of arrests during a

public health crisis is com-

pounding mistrust between

Hong Kong residents and the

city’s leaders, who are not direct-

ly elected and are widely per-

ceived as serving the interests of

the Chinese Communist Party

before the Hong Kong people. A s

prosecutors prepare to bring

hundreds to trial on riot charges

stemming from the pro-democ-

racy rebellion, the tactics are

setting up a new flash point.

Arrests “are what Beijing and

the Hong Kong government

thinks may work, [and so] they

keep on this hard-line ap-

proach,” said Eric Cheung, a

legal scholar at the University of

Hong Kong. “The assessment is

that, in the end, there would

only be a limited number of

people who are prepared to risk

their liberty and life to fight and

OsCAr CHAN

protest.”

“They may be right in that

sense,” he added, “but it doesn’t

address the root problems — a nd

so one day, there will be another

round.”

On Feb. 8, protests flared in

several districts as residents

fearful of coronavirus infection

pushed back against officials’

plans to set up quarantine facili-

ties. Ta ctics demonstrators

honed last year — road barri-

cades, molotov cocktails, vandal-

ism — were now employed to-

ward a different goal.

In a statement on Twitter,

police said protesters in the

Ts eung Kwan O neighborhood

had “blocked roads with barri-

cades, damaged traffic lights,

dug up bricks on the sidewalk

and threw them on the thor-

oughfare.” Police arrested 119

people, including Chan, another

reporter and five lower-level

elected officials. “We appeal to

members of the public not to

break the law,” police said.

Ben Chung, head of the local

district council, and other elect-

ed officials arrived at an apart-

ment block that night after hear-

ing from an anxious resident

whose d aughter had been arrest-

ed.

“It is my duty to be at the

scene. District councilors are

responsible for their district,

and we were there to see if the

police were carrying out their

duties properly,” Chung said.

Within an hour, police were

rounding up everyone present.

Chung and his colleagues were

detained, he said, along with

others, including a social worker

and a tourist from mainland

China. They were kept overnight

on charges of participating in an

unlawful assembly and released

on bail.

“A s elected officials, we were

simply trying to liaise with the

public and the police, and to

minimize confrontation and

clashes, but it seems the police

don’t understand that,” he said.

Before the coronavirus out-

break, Chinese leaders urged

Hong Kong to crack down on the

pro-democracy protests, brand-

ing them a threat to the “one

country, two systems” frame-

ABOVE: Members of community groups protest before Hong Kong

Financial Secretary Paul Chan delivers the annual budget at the

legislative council on Thursday. After widespread unrest in 201 9,

dissent in Hong Kong is evolving in the coronavirus era. RIGHT: A

Hong Kong police officer prepares to pepper spray student

journalist Oscar Chan, who was covering protests in Hong Kong’s

Tseung Kwan O district on Feb. 8. Police charged Chan with theft

for possessing a transit card that provides discounts for the elderly.