The Week - USA (2021-03-20)

Best columns: International NEWS 15

NAMIBIA

RUSSIA

Namibia’s farm resettlement project is a failure,

said New Era. After securing independence from

South Africa in 1990, our nation tried to rectify

the injustices of its apartheid past by breaking

up the large farms held by white landowners and

distributing lots to black citizens. But these novice

farmers haven’t been able to make a go of it. Take

the Ongombo West lily farm, which once ex-

ported $500,000 worth of flowers a year. It’s now

completely idle, and its current occupants “have

resorted to the illegal sale of alcohol to generate

income for survival.” One problem is economies

of scale. Big farms could buy supplies in bulk

and at a discount, but small farms face insuper-

able costs. And the new farmers are unable to get

loans, because they can’t use the farmland—which

still belongs to the state—as collateral. When they

try to switch crops to something they can actu-

ally manage, such as game farming or charcoal

production, they must navigate “countless restric-

tions and unnecessary bureaucracy.” By the time

farmers finally receive state approval, they have

“lost out on lucrative markets.” If resettlement is

to continue, it will require a support program to

train and equip the new farmers. Namibia “cannot

afford to have productive farmland lying idle.”

Amnesty International has turned itself into the

Kremlin’s “useful idiot,” said Artemy Troitsky.

The human rights group had designated Rus-

sian opposition leader Alexei Navalny a prisoner

of conscience, which he clearly is. Navalny has

ostensibly been locked up for parole violations;

the real reason for his detention is that he has

repeatedly exposed the corruption of President

Vladimir Putin’s regime. But after “Kremlin in-

stigators” bombarded Amnesty with requests to

label Navalny’s past nationalist comments as hate

speech, the group stripped him of his prisoner of

conscience status. What did Navalny do that was

so terrible? Is it his support for Russia’s annexa-
tion of Crimea? That is a political opinion, not
hate speech. Is it that during the 2008 Russian-
Georgian war, Navalny referred to Georgians as
“rodents?” That’s shameful, but he has “apolo-
gized for it a thousand times.” Navalny’s videos do
inspire hatred, but it’s “hatred of dictatorship and
tyranny, theft and corruption.” Amnesty’s criticism
of Navalny won’t affect his reputation here. But it
will trash the group’s reputation among Russian
activists, which was surely the Kremlin’s goal.
Amnesty has done Putin a huge favor in smearing
AP his opponent, and “wounded itself in the process.”

Why land

resettlement

isn’t working

Editorial

New Era

Amnesty does

the Kremlin’s

bidding

Artemy Troitsky

Echo.msk.ru

The pandemic has shined a light on

the selfishness of Peru’s elite, said Luis

Ángeles Laynes in ExitosaNoticias .pe

(Peru). In a “clear betrayal of the coun-

try,” former President Martín Vizcarra

has confirmed reports that he and his

wife secretly received a Covid-19 vac-

cination last October—long before

anyone else in Peru and a mere month

before Congress removed him from of-

fice for alleged corruption. Within days,

the Vacunagate (Vaccinegate) scandal

broadened as more politicians and well-

connected Peruvians admitted that they,

too, had received early trial doses of

the two-shot regimen developed by China’s Sinopharm. We now

know of at least 470 people who were inoculated clandestinely—

some even got three doses. Health Minister Pilar Mazzetti and

Foreign Minister Elizabeth Astete both resigned after being outed.

Mazzetti was perhaps the most disappointing of the cheats, hav-

ing recently assured Peruvians that “those of us at the head of

the institutions have to set an example and wait our turn.” How

could she tell such lies to a country that is mourning more than

47,000 Covid deaths, and where thousands of people wait in line

every day to buy oxygen for ailing loved ones at home, because

hospitals are full and “there are no more ICU beds”?

Prosecutors are investigating whether those doses were part of

a Chinese bribe, said Jacqueline Fowks in El País (Spain). Sino-

pharm last year began a 12,000-person clinical trial of its shot

in Peru, while simultaneously negotiating a deal with the coun-

try’s government. The firm donated some $860,000 worth of

medical supplies to the Peruvian Health

Ministry—including ventilators, masks,

and gloves—and an extra 2,000 doses

of trial vaccine that ministry officials

could distribute as they saw fit. Mem-

bers of the vaccine purchase committee,

top government officials, and “dozens

of businessmen, politicians, univer-

sity authorities, and their relatives all

benefited from the VIP vaccines.” On

Jan. 7, the government agreed to buy

38 million doses of Sinopharm’s shot.

Ecuador has its own vaccine scandal,

said El Universo (Ecuador) in an edito-

rial. Health Minister Juan Carlos Zevallos was forced out last

week after he sent letters encouraging university presidents to skip

the line and helped arrange a vaccination effort at a nursing home

where his mother lives. Frankly, he should have gone long ago.

Since the pandemic began, his ministry has signed contracts for

medical supplies “that appear corrupt” and has failed to address

shortages of medicine. Add Argentina to the list, said Matthias

Flammenman in LaIzquierdaDiario.com (Argentina). Health

Minister Ginés González García was ousted last month after he

helped at least one influential pal get a vaccine appointment. And

the head of a teachers union and his deputy were both caught

taking shots reserved for active educators, “even though it’s been

decades since they saw the inside of a classroom.” These abuses

are the products of a self-dealing elite culture on both the Left and

Right in Latin America. It is a “regime of privilege” that doesn’t

care about ideology—whether you get inoculated early depends

only on “whether you have friends in power.”

South America: VIPs jump the vaccine line

Former Peruvian President Vizcarra: Got secret shots