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China Slams U.S. for Travel Restrictions as More Countries Ramp Up Efforts to Stop Coronavirus Spread

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3 years ago

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  • Many countries have implemented travel restrictions on China and foreigners who have visited China to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
  • In Hong Kong, hospital workers launched a 5-day strike after leader Carrie Lam refused to fully close the city’s border with China, despite pressure from across the political spectrum and the fact that other countries have closed their shared border with China.
  • China slammed the U.S. in particular for its strict travel restrictions, arguing that U.S. media condemned the Trump administration’s decision to impose the new rules.
  • Some disputed that claim, noting that media outlets in the U.S. have received criticism for sensationalist headlines and fostering xenophobia.

WHO Announces More Coronavirus Cases and Deaths

More and more countries around the world have ramped up travel restrictions as fears over the coronavirus continue to spread.

World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday that there have been 17,238 confirmed cases and 361 deaths in China.

He also said that there were 151 confirmed cases in 23 other countries and one death, which was reported by the Philippines on Sunday. 

In a warning to his colleagues at the WHO executive board meeting, Tedros stated that “panic and fear” were the real challenges in addressing the coronavirus outbreak.

“It’s no reason to really panic now,” he said. “The chances of getting this going to anywhere outside China is very low, and even in China, when you go to other provinces, it’s very low.”

Tedros also reiterated that there was no need for measures that “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade,” a point the WHO has repeated since it declared that the coronavirus an international emergency.

U.S. Travel Restriction

But global leaders appear to be ignoring that warning.

The U.S., for example, has already implemented some of the strongest measures. On Friday, President Donald Trump’s administration declared the coronavirus a public health emergency and imposed strict travel restrictions.

In the announcement, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that all foreign nationals who have been to China in the past 14 days will be barred from entering the states starting Sunday. 

Those restrictions do not apply to immediate family members of U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

The secretary also described restrictions for the Hubei province, which houses Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus first broke out. Under the new rules, U.S. citizens who visited the Hubei province in the last two weeks will be subject to quarantine for 14 days.

U.S. citizens who have been to other areas of mainland China in the last two weeks will be subject to screening for 14 days as well.

Following Azar’s announcement, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman criticized the Trump administration’s response. 

“Just as the WHO recommended against travel restrictions, the U.S. rushed to go in the opposite way,” she said. “Certainly not a gesture of goodwill.” 

Other Countries Impose Restrictions

The U.S. is not the only country to impose travel restrictions.

According to reports, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand have implemented similar travel bans on foreign nationals who have gone to China.

Other countries like Japan and South Korea have denied entry from foreigners who visited the Hubei province. 

Italy and Israel have reportedly stopped all incoming air traffic from China, while airlines all over the world have also announced they will not fly to or from the country. 

North Korea and Mongolia, which share borders with China, have sealed them entirely.

But Hong Kong, which is an autonomous city-state of China and shares a land border, has not fully closed its borders with the country.

That decision, however, has been highly contested in Hong Kong, which has reported 15 confirmed cases of coronavirus.

Pro-democracy protestors, hospital workers, businesses, and even some pro-government lawmakers have all called on the city’s embattled leader, Carrie Lam, to close the border shared with China immediately.

Lam put some travel restrictions in place last week. On Monday she announced the closure of four more crossing points along the city’s border with mainland China, defying calls for full closure and leaving three crossing points open.

In response, thousands of hospital workers in Hong Kong have launched a five-day strike calling for all border crossings to be sealed. Lam, for her part, has said a full closure would be “a discriminatory approach.”

But others have argued that Lam is just listening to directives from the Chinese Communist Party, and is putting her obligations to the party before her own people in the face of a growing public health crisis.

Chinese Response and Media Criticism

A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman said in a statement Monday that China respects the decision of some countries to “adopt or enhance quarantine measures at border entry,” but added, “some countries, the US in particular, have inappropriately overreacted, which certainly runs counter to WHO advice.”

The spokeswoman said that the U.S. response “could only create and spread fear, which is a very bad example.”

“Even American media and experts doubted the government’s decision, saying that the US government’s restrictions on China are precisely what the WHO rejects, that the US is turning from overconfidence to fear and overreaction, and that banning the entry of visitors who traveled to China in the past 14 days is suspected to be violating civil rights instead of reducing risks of virus spreading,” she continued.

Following this statement, some argued that the opposite may be true, noting that the media, especially in the U.S., has been criticized for creating hysteria and fearmongering around the coronavirus outbreak.

Some have even blamed the media for fostering a recent spike in xenophobia. According to reports, the University of California Berkeley faced backlash after the administration stated that “xenophobia” is a “common” or “normal” reaction to coronavirus.

However, reports of xenophobia are not limited to the U.S. Chinese Canadians have also reported an uptick in nationality and race-based prejudice, which they say is largely due to social media.

On Monday, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte called on his country to stop stirring up anti-Chinese sentiments.

See what others are saying: (The New York Times) (BBC) (Al Jazeera)

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International

Giorgia Meloni Claims Victory in Far-Right Shift for Italy

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16 hours ago

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September 26, 2022

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Her party has neofascist roots, and she has praised Mussolini in the past.

An Election Without Precedent

Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party grabbed the largest share of votes in Italy’s national election by a wide margin, giving the post of prime minister to the first woman and most right-wing politician since Benito Mussolini.

She declared victory early Monday morning after exit polls showed her party overwhelmingly in the lead with at least 26% of the vote, making it the dominant faction in the right-wing coalition, which got 44%.

The other two parties in the alliance — Mateo Salvini’s far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right Forza Italia — took 9% and 8% of the vote, respectively.

The center-left alliance only garnered 26% of the vote, with 63% of votes counted, according to the interior ministry.

Voter turnout dropped to a record low at only 63.91%, nine points below the rate in 2018, with turnout especially dismal in southern regions like Sicily.

Meloni is set to become prime minister in the coming weeks as a new government is formed, and the rest of Europe is bracing for what many see as a neofascist demagogue to take power in the continent’s third largest economy.

Speaking to media and supporters following the preliminary results, Meloni said it was “a night of pride for many and a night of redemption.” She promised to govern for all Italians and unite the country.

But her relatively extreme politics — opposed to immigration, the European Union, and what she calls “gender ideology” — unsettles many who fear she will roll back civil rights and form a Euroskeptic alliance with other far-right leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban.

The Next Mussolini?

During the election, Meloni stressed that she is a conservative, not a fascist, but opponents point to her rhetoric, past statements, and party’s history as evidence to the contrary.

“Either you say yes or you say no,” she howled to Spain’s far-right Vox party earlier this year. “Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby. Yes to sex identity, no to gender ideology. Yes to the culture of life, not the abysm of death. Yes to the university of the cross, no to the Islamist violence. Yes to secure borders, no to mass migration. Yes to the work of our citizens, no to big international finance. Yes to the sovereignty of peoples, no to the bureaucrats in Brussels. And yes to our civilization.”

Meloni co-founded Brothers of Italy in 2012 as an alternative to the more mainstream right-wing parties. It has roots in the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neofascist party that sprouted in the wake of World War II to continue Mussolini’s legacy after his party was banned. The Movement’s symbol — a tricolor flame — remains on the Brothers of Italy’s Flag today, and Meloni has refused to remove it.

She joined the MSI’s youth branch in the 1990s and went on to lead it after the party was renamed the National Alliance.

“I believe that Mussolini was a good politician, which means that everything he did, he did for Italy,” Meloni said at the time.

For the first decade, Brothers of Italy struggled to win more than a single-digit percentage of the vote, and it only garnered 4% in the 2018 election.

But in 2021 and 2022, it distinguished itself as the only opposition party to the unity government that fell apart last July, causing its popularity to inflate.

But the party still wrestles with its fascistic roots; last week, it suspended a member who was running for parliament because a local newspaper revealed that he had made comments supporting Adolf Hitler.

In an August video, Meloni promised to impose a naval blockade in the Mediterranean to interdict Libyan refugees from crossing to Southern Europe on boats. She has also discussed pulling Italy out of the Eurozone or even the E.U. entirely, but she moderated her rhetoric toward Europe during the election.

Italy has received some 200 billion euros in European pandemic recovery funds, and it is set to receive more unless the Union punishes Meloni’s government for democratic backsliding.

See what others are saying: (BBC) (Associated Press) (NPR)

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International

Iranian Protests Sparked by Death of Mahsa Amini Spread Internationally

Published

5 days ago

on

September 22, 2022

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Anger initially directed at the police has now shifted to the Islamic regime itself, with Iranian-Americans protesting outside the U.N. Headquarters as their country’s president spoke inside.

Hijabs Go Up in Flames

The largest protest movement in recent years has gripped Iran since the so-called morality police allegedly beat 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for violating the dress code last week, leading to her later death.

Demonstrations spread from the capital Tehran to at least 80 other cities and towns, with videos on social media showing women burning their hijabs and cutting their hair in defiance.

In response, the government has gradually extended a virtual internet blackout across the country, blocking access to What’s App and Instagram.

To prevent protests from spreading, Iran’s biggest telecom operator largely shut down mobile internet access again Thursday, Netblocks, a group that monitors internet access, said in a statement, describing the restrictions as the most severe since 2019.

Clashes between police and protestors have killed some, but death toll reports on Thursday were conflicted. The Associated Press tallied at least nine people dead, while Iran’s state television put the number at 17, and a human rights group estimated at least 31 deaths.

The violence began on Saturday, shortly after the news that Amini had died the day prior in the hospital where she was comatose for three days.

Previously, the morality police arrested her for violating Islamic law requiring women to cover their hair with a head scarf and wear long, loose-fitting clothing.

Multiple reports and eyewitness accounts claimed that officers beat her in the head with batons and banged her head against one of their vehicles, but authorities have denied harming her, saying she suffered a “sudden heart failure.” Her father told BBC that she was in good health and that he had not been allowed to view her autopsy report.

“My son was with her. Some witnesses told my son she was beaten in the van and in the police station,” he said.

Surveillance footage was released showing Amini collapsing inside the hospital after grabbing her head, seemingly in pain.

From Anti-Hijab to Anti-Regime

Although the protests began in reaction to Amini’s death and Iran’s repressive policing, they quickly flowered into a mass opposition movement against the Islamic regime as men joined ranks of demonstrators and chants of “Death to the dictator!” broke out.

The anger was directed at the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as President Ebrahim Raisi, who attended the United Nations General Assembly this week. Iranian-Americans rallied outside the U.N. Headquarters Wednesday to voice their discontent as Raisi addressed the assembly.

“The hijab is used as a weapon in Iran,” one woman told CBS in Los Angeles. “It is a weapon against the West, and women are used as pawns.”

“Let this be the George Flloyd moment of Iran,” she added.

There have also been demonstrations of solidarity in countries such as Lebanon, Germany, and Canada.

See what others are saying: (The New York Times) (Al Jazeera) (BBC)

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International

Queen Elizabeth II Dies at 96

Published

3 weeks ago

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September 8, 2022

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“I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world,” her eldest son and successor, King Charles III said.

The Passing of a Historic Monarch

Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning monarch in Britain’s history, passed away on Thursday afternoon, per an announcement from Buckingham Palace.

According to the Palace’s statement, The Queen “died peacefully” while at her Balmoral estate in Scotland. Reports say she was surrounded by family members, including her eldest son and successor, who announced in the hours after her passing that he will go by King Charles III. Several of her other children and grandchildren were also present. 

Early on Thursday morning, Buckingham Palace announced that the Queen was under medical supervision as doctors were concerned for her health. Soon after, BBC One suspended its programming to focus on coverage of the Queen. Anchors donned black attire while other media outlets and royal circles began to prepare for the 96-year-old monarch’s passing. 

The Queen took the throne at the age of 25 following the death of her father, King George VI. She served her tenure for 70 years, becoming not only the longest-serving monarch in the U.K., but also the second-longest serving monarch in world history. 

As the world changed drastically over the course of those seven decades, the Queen became a symbol of reliability and security for many. During her reign, 15 Prime Ministers took office in the U.K. She met regularly with leaders both in the country and abroad.

“She is unlike any other monarch in our history – she’s our longest-lived, longest-serving, longest-reigning monarch,” royal biographer Robert Hardman told BBC News. “She just stands for this constancy, this sense of permanence and stability. And I think over the years people have probably taken her for granted often. Suddenly, at times like this, we all realise… how precious she is.”

Charles Becomes King

In addition to King Charles III, she is survived by her other three children, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward. Her grandson Prince William is now the heir to the throne, followed by his children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis. 

The Queen’s husband Prince Philip died last year. 

According to the palace, King Charles III and his wife will remain in Scotland and return to London on Friday. Over the next ten days, the family will enter a period of grieving and succession. 

“We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished Sovereign and much-loved Mother,” The King said in a statement. “I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world.”

“During this period of mourning and change, my family and I will be comforted and sustained by our knowledge of the respect and deep affection in which the Queen was so widely held.”

See what others are saying: (BBC News) (New York Times) (NBC News)

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