Protests Around The World
During the last weeks, the whole world has gone crazy, the news have become an strenuous compilation of all the protests that Latin America, the Middle East, and the whole world have been presenting. Thousands and thousands of people that have come to the street and yelled to the sky their discomfort with their respective government, singing the song of angry men.
These protests have taken place due to various reasons, with many different individual purposes, but all pursuing one last end, to be listened, and their rights to be properly respected; unfortunately, this is not the only thing they have in common, and this one is not as good as the first one. The position taken by all the governments is exactly the same, repression, avoiding responsibilities and putting the blame on others.
One perfect example is the problems in the middle East; for example, Lebanon, where the country has been paralysed for almost two weeks by protests demanding an end to corruption, an effective government, and economic reforms.
The Country's reaction? It took the government 13 days of violence, and negation and finally resigned to listen the population, when Mr. Hariri, their Prime Minister, said that he had reached a "dead end" and that a "shock" was needed to resolve the crisis. But this little speech was not enough to calm things down, because they did not satisfy their needs, and the situation goes on.
The situation in Iraq isn’t different, protests have become part of the landscape, young men of all over the country have come out to the street to demonstrate their strong opposition to the current situation of corruption, unemployment and poor public services. And as always, what is their government's reaction? to use water cannons, tear gas, live rounds and rubber bullets. Nowadays, many protesters are imprisoned, many others have been killed, and thousands are wounded.
There is no need to go that far away, Latin America has become the main protagonist in protesting: Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, all facing a wave of protests, all different, but similar.
But as always, instead of listening, the government's reaction was oppressive, and sent armed forces and the "carabineros" police that attacked their citizens. Besides that, they declared a state of emergency that resulted in the militarization of the country and even a curfew which was kept for several days.
Many may believe that only because the proposal of increasing the metro’s ticket price was eliminated, everything should return to normal, but reality is that the citizens are not protesting for 30 pesos, but for 30 years of injustice, protesting for terrible pension and health systems, where only 20% can access to a private health system (A consequence of new liberal privatizations), the lack of protection, education, all the corruption, and even the privatization of water, so Chilean problems are just beginning.
In Bolivia, the crisis started after the last presidential
elections, where something truly curious happened. During the counting of the votes, the transmission abruptly stopped when about the 80% of the votes were counted, the transmission stopped for 24 hours, but at that moment, Evo Morales and Carlos Mesa were really close, but when the transmission of the votes continued, Evo Morales had an advantage of more than 10 points, that is the total needed to avoid a second round. Making this the FOURTH time that Evo Morales is chosen as President.
The TSE (organization is charge of counting the votes) gave a variety of excuses to this stop in the transmission, among those, that there were “technical problems.
This provoked massive protests, where, as always, the government sent the authorities to repressed them, by using the violence, force and pepper spray. Not only the citizens raised their voice, but also the international organizations, like the OEA that denounced irregularities in the process and proposed a second round. Nowadays, Evo Morales is considered by many, an illegitimate president.
In the meantime, in Ecuador, their President, Lenin Moreno, arrived to an agreement with de IMF (Monetary International Fund), where they received 4.2 million dollars, in exchange of reducing the fiscal deficit, to accomplish these measures, their President proposed a series of strategies, like and extra collaboration from enterprises with incomes greater than 10 million dollars per year, the reduce in the payment of almost a 20% in temporal contracts, a reduction by half of vacations for government workers, and the rise in the price of gasoline expected to increase by 25 to 120 percent starting Oct. 3rd.
These measures resulted in the rise of the transport sector and the price
of the products, because now to obtain them is more expensive because the trucks used to transport them are more expensive as well. So, immediate protests from many sectors started, including the transport sector, the agricultural sector and all of these led by the indigenous movement. In the meantime, the position from the government was, (What a surprise!), to repress the crowds and put the blame on president Nicolas Maduro, saying that this movement is with the hidden purpose of destabilizing their government.
Both sides agreed to dialogue, but they are firm with their decisions, and will not give terrain to the opposite power, leaving Ecuador in a truly uncomfortable situation where no one gets answers.
This exact situation repeats in many more countries, where protests are the only way of an angry population to demand for help, ask for a change, for the government to listen, to react, to respond. But the angry crowds are being shut down, as if their unique fate were to be enslaved, so it is our duty to fight against this injustice, because the world can not be silenced and will never go speechless.
By Camila Orozco E, Step 10.
