"Don't Give Up On Us...."

Skeptics scoff at the activists in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Turkey who still cling to the belief that democracy and dignity will overcome the authoritarian rule that triumphed following the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011-2013. How can today's Rohingya Muslims fleeing their burning villages in Myanmar envision democratic rule when they lack support from Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner whose civilian party won a parliamentary majority in 2015, after the country's military regime released her from house arrest in 2010?

Perhaps the key to never giving up on democracy is believing it is not a sure thing, but, as the demonstrations in Iran suggested on New Year's Eve, 2017, neither is democracy's defeat a done deal.

Since 1961, Amnesty International has been keeping track of those subjected to human rights violations. If you have as few as five minutes to help alleviate suffering, go to amnestyusa.org and find out what you can do.

U.S. citizen Joshua Holt, a former Mormon missionary charged with spying, and his wife were arrested in Venezuela in June, 2016 when guns were planted in their apartment. U.S. citizen Alan Gross could tell them political conditions can change for the better. He was released in Cuba in 2014, when relations between the two countries improved. Mr. Holt and his wife were released in 2018.

St. Andrew Dung-Lac and his companions were martyred trying to convince North Koreans of their worth before God, but the current regime could not kill Oh Chung-Sung, the North Korean soldier who was seriously wounded when he ran to freedom across the border in November, 2017. The long tapeworms, tuberculosis, and hepatitus B his South Korean doctor found in the 24-year-old soldier tell how wounded North Korea's army already is.

China feels the need to prevent engineers building railroads in Africa from having any local contacts and to control internet access by its citizens at home. Nobel Peace Prize poet, Liu Xiaobo, and his wife had to be confined to their home to keep his pro-democracy works from inciting the public. But a year after Mr. Liu died, his widow, Liu Xia, was released and allowed to go into exile in Germany.

Hong Kong's young pro-democracy activists, who carried on knowing they faced repeated arrests after leading a 2014 protest, triumphed when an appeals court overturned their sentences in February, 2018. Despite the threat of receiving a prison term of up to three years, Hong Kong soccer fans bravely turned their backs on the playing of China's nation anthem, "March of the Volunteers," in October, 2017. Hong Kong protests that began in early June, 2019, aimed to eliminate the threat of transferring domestic criminals to the China mainland for trial. As demonstrations continued into August, both demands for democratic reforms and police intervention increased. China's slowing economy already raises Beijing's fear of an inability to control mainland dissatisfaction with a declining standard of living and seems to restrain the Xi government from further aggravating conditions by using military force against its citizens in Hong Kong. Unknown is how much broadcast and social media coverage of the Hong Kong protests reaches the restive Tibetan and Muslim populations in western China and what impact the news might be having.

In Russia, Putin's prosecutors have to rely on bogus accusations to keep the Navalny brothers, Oleg and Alexei, from running for President and using social media to mount anti-corruption proptest marches, not only in Moscow, but throughout Russia. Communist politicians lost elections in 2018, when Russia's senior citizens began protesting Putin's plan to raise the age when they could retire and claim pensions.  In TIME magazine (the May 1/May 8, 2017 issue), former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said, "I am convinced Russia can succeed only through democracy."

Classic World War II Christmas carols retain their meaning during this holiday season. We think about the spread of democracy and sing, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas...Next year all our troubles will be miles away...Some day soon we all will be together, if the fates allow."

Light Travels Faster than the Days before Christmas

I don't know if observations like this led to Einstein's quantum theory or his theory of relativity, but I do know that all the observations he made before he bothered to begin talking led to his later work.
At a presentation by James Costa, when he was discussing his new book, Darwin's Backyard; How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory, which includes DIY experiments kids could do, a member of the audience asked him if he thought experiments came before theory or vice versa. Acknowledging, it was a bit like the chicken and the egg, he said he thought observation and curiosity probably came first.

This got me thinking about what has happened in the Middle East since the Arab Spring in 2011. On the nightly news, I well remember seeing a smiling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton surrounded by smiling Egyptian faces in Tahrir Square then. Just as vividly, I remember Mrs. Clinton responding, during her presidential campaign of 2016, to a Congressional committee blaming her for U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens' death in Benghazi, Libya. Curious about what changes took place between 2011 and 2016, I looked for answers in Steven A. Cook's book, False Dawn.

Members of the administration of George W. Bush initially saw the Arab uprisings in Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia as confirmation of the wisdom of 2003's invasion, Operation Iraqi Freedom. Historical observation could have predicted the Middle East had not been waiting for a foreign intervention and occupation to bring democracy to the region. Even so, once protesters overthrew the "stable" authoritarian regimes U.S. policy traditionally supported, U.S. administrations continued to believe they should be involved in the democratization of the Middle East. If for no other reason, Washington continued to provide economic, political, diplomatic, and military support to countries allied with its U.S. interests there.

The trouble with trying to bring democracy to the Middle East is, as observation shows, the region has no Magna Carta tradition nor a political-philosophical underpinning of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson. What it does have is a legacy of pan-Arabism expansion, the Muslim religion, authoritarian systems supported by fear, and tribal fragmentation. Instead of democracy reaching the Middle East, maybe  observation could have told the world to expect terrorists and social media to push an Arab-Muslim agenda West?

Given the actual situation in the Middle East, how could a New Year's Resolution to use curiosity and new observations come up with ways to satisfy the peaceful desires of people, not only in the Middle East, but throughout the world? In what ways could travel, technologies, new roles of women as entrepreneurs and politicians, education, natural and man-made disasters, and medical advances foster peaceful changes?

Youth and Social Media Fuel Democracy

Young leaders in both China and Russia show they are not buying into the Communist indoctrination their elders accepted with little or no question. Fear of arrest, prison terms, the gulag, and being sent to a penal colony now have to compete with exposure to the alternative future social media describes for young digital pros.

     Sparks of democratic fervor have erupted before social media existed. The Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Czechoslovakia's 1968 reforms, and the pro-democracy movement that brought students to China's Tiananmen Square in 1989 were unsuccessful. But activists persisted and broke up the U.S.S.R. in 1991. Now they have the social media that helped fuel the 2009 Green Movement named for the campaign color of the losing presidential candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi,  in Iran; the Arab Spring; the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong; and anti-corruption rallies in Russia.

     When the three under-30-year-olds who led Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement were sentenced to prison terms in August, 2017, they said they considered their arrests a threat, rather than an end to confrontation. China shows it recognizes the threat of social media by trying to monitor who is saying what on the internet and by demanding ID verification for posts. Beijing's leaders refused to allow Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace Prize winning leader in Tiananmen Square, to leave China for treatment of liver cancer. In the West, unlike in China, they knew he would be able to share his poems about democracy in person and on social media.

     It should be mentioned that not only social media, but also travel and education connect the world's democracy advocates. In  Hong Kong, for example, the Penn Club is a network of the University of Pennsylvania's alumni, families, and friends. Students from Penn and the families that sent them there recognize the university's home in Philadelphia also is the location where the US Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written to inspire the American Revolution. Recently, faculty visitors from the University of Pennsylvania conducted a Global Forum in Hong Kong that brought business and government leaders together with alumni to consider the key issues facing global business. Who knows what else these leaders could have discussed when they got together. Hong Kong protests that began in early June, 2019, aimed to eliminate the threat of transferring domestic criminals to the China mainland for trial. As demonstrations continued into August, both demands for democratic reforms and police intervention increased with no end in sight.

     In Russia, corruption by the select group that has benefited from the country's newly found oil and gas wealth motivates anti-government marches and rallies. Led by the blogger, Alexei Navalny, young protesters risked arrest to take to the streets throughout Russia in March and June, 2017. When Navalny was sentenced on a false charge in 2013, 10,000 protesters marched in Moscow to secure his early release. Russia's leaders can only imagine how many more protesters social media will bring out to welcome Alexei's younger brother, Oleg, when he finally is released from a false charge that sentenced him to a penal colony for three and a half years.

     For protection, in April, 2016, Vladimir Putin created a Russian National Guard loyal to him alone. By creating his private cadre of as many as 300,000 troops, however, Putin also created a prime target for infiltration by anyone out to do him harm. It is no wonder that, as head of the Guard, Viktor Zolotov, Putin's long-time personal bodyguard, is in a position to monitor those authorized to get close to Putin, and Putin is in a position to monitor Zolotov's activities. In September, 2018, whether from irritation or real fear, Zolotov challenged Alexei Navalny to a duel.

     But what will China's and Russia's students find when they go West for advanced educations in the United States and England? They'll meet President Obama's daughter at Harvard and Nobel-prize-winning Malala at Oxford. Students from Hong Kong, who attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, found they could sit on a bench next to a statue of Ben Franklin, and they probably ventured downtown to tour Independence Hall and to visit the Liberty Bell. Democracy stands ready to outlive the current leaders in China and Russia.

(Also, check out earlier posts: China's Manifest Destiny East, West, and South; Hong Kong Update, Remember Liu Xiaobo, Russia's Alternative to Putin, and 29 Countries Influence 7 Billion People.)