From Eastern Europe to South America: anti-government protests are spreading
Anna Sonny, 21 February 2014
President Yanukovych has announced that he is willing to hold elections early as part of a deal with the opposition to end the political crisis in Ukraine. This is a huge step forward in negotiations after shocking images emerged this week of gun battles between police and protestors, with police snipers firing mercilessly at protestors, wounding many and bringing the total death toll up to 75. The next elections are scheduled for 2015 but it looks like bringing them forward will certainly result in Yanukovych’s defeat. Protestors have long been calling for him to step down, and now they will be able to vote him out.
Just south of the country, on the other side of the Black Sea, journalists have been protesting in Turkey against a bill passed earlier this month by the government that will allow authorities to block websites for privacy violations without a court ruling. It will also force internet providers to store data on web users’s activites and make it available to the authorities. Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the legislation would make the internet ‘more safe and free.’ This claim is almost laughable, given the Prime Minister’s hatred for Twitter after the social media platform played a huge role in spreading information during the protests last year. His recent attempts to stifle a corruption scandal by firing over 350 police officials who were all directly involved in the investigation of his inner circle has already proved his disregard for rule of law.
Elsewhere in Venezuela, protests have been on-going against Nicolas Maduro’s government; Maduro narrowly won elections last year following the death of former president Hugo Chavez and the mainly student-led protest is fighting against a lack of security in the country, which experiences a high level of violent crime. Protests were sparked last month after an actress and former beauty queen and her ex-husband were killed in front of their five-year-old daughter in a roadside robbery. Restrictions on freedom of speech and the government’s heavy regulation of the media have added fuel to the fire, along with chronic shortages of basic goods. Last year the Venezuelan government seized a toilet paper factory to avoid scarcity of the product.
Across the globe scenes of protest are becoming common place as powerful and recalcitrant governments are facing the frustration and anger of their citizens. Whether international bodies like the EU step in or not to defend the protest movements, governments need to be held to account and the protestors are determined to do so, unfortunately at the cost of their own lives.