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https://ewn.co.za/2021/04/20/holding-on-to-power-africa-s-longest-serving-leaders

Here are some of Africa’s other longest-serving leaders, some of whom change the constitution, crush the opposition and use fear and violence to maintain their grip on power.

N’DJAMENA, Chad – After three decades in power, Chad’s President Idriss Deby died on Tuesday from wounds suffered on the battlefield, the army said in a shock announcement just a day after the 68-year-old was re-elected to a sixth term.

Here are some of Africa’s other longest-serving leaders, some of whom change the constitution, crush the opposition and use fear and violence to maintain their grip on power.

MORE THAN 30 YEARS

Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema is Africa’s longest-serving leader, still in power after 41 years. He deposed his uncle in a 1979 coup, and became “the country’s god” with “all power over men and things”, state radio said.

Obiang, the world’s most enduring non-royal head of state, was last re-elected in 2016.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tokyo-flexes-its-talons-11618871351?mod=opinion_featst_pos3

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s visit to the White House is being hailed in both countries as a major success. On the American side, officials rejoiced that Mr. Suga aligned Japan with U.S. talking points in Asia. As the prime minister said at a joint press conference, America and Japan both “oppose any attempt to change the status quo by force or coercion in the East and South China seas and intimidation of others in the region.” References to the Taiwan Straits and the situation in Xinjiang added to the impression that Tokyo is becoming more forthright in supporting a tougher U.S. line.

On the Japanese side, there was also much to be happy about. President Biden chose Mr. Suga for his first Oval Office meeting with a foreign leader, an unmistakable sign of the priority the Biden administration attaches to the relationship. Better still, American officials didn’t press the prime minister for a list of specific commitments that might have been difficult to sell at home—or that would ignite a firestorm in the volatile relationship between Beijing and Tokyo.

Mr. Suga hedged comments on Taiwan and Xinjiang carefully. On Taiwan, he said at the joint press conference that the summit “reaffirmed” the U.S.-Japan consensus. On Xinjiang he said that he had “explained Japan’s position and initiatives” to the president. Neither the press conference nor the joint statement Messrs. Biden and Suga issued after their discussion used the word “genocide.”

While Washington and Tokyo broadly agree about the risks of China’s behavior, Japan still prefers to stay a few steps behind America. Geography, economics and history all connect Japan to China. While officials in Tokyo fully understand that China’s growing military might and territorial assertiveness require a robust Japanese response, neither the country’s business community nor the public wants to be too confrontational with a neighboring superpower. On military and human rights issues alike, the Japanese consensus is shifting, but Tokyo’s postwar tradition of cautious diplomacy won’t change overnight.

And then there is the American question. The oscillations in U.S. policy under both President Obama and President Trump left Japan with a severe case of whiplash. Mr. Obama’s flaccid response to China’s construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea horrified Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government. Mr. Obama made the Trans-Pacific Partnership the centerpiece of his Asia policy, but Mr. Trump campaigned against it before rejecting the deal in office.

Tokyo cannot be 100% sure where the Biden administration’s China policy is going. While Mr. Suga was in Washington, John Kerry was in China pushing for a grand bargain on climate. The Biden administration’s rhetoric on issues ranging from Taiwan to Xinjiang is hawkish, but Mr. Biden has proposed a small cut to the defense budget, adjusted for inflation. Under the circumstances, Mr. Suga’s most prudent course was to avoid offending anyone in Washington without unduly shocking China—and this is what he seems to have accomplished.

The alliance with Japan is the single most important international relationship America has. Without Japan’s economic weight, technological capabilities and geographical position, the U.S. cannot build an effective coalition to balance China. But without strong and stable American support, Japan can’t last as an independent great power in China’s front yard.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17300/china-russia-provocations

Russian troops are massing on the Ukraine border, Chinese vessels are swarming Whitsun Reef of the Philippines in the South China Sea, and China’s air force is flying almost daily through Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone. Chinese troops for almost a year have been dug in deep in Indian-controlled Ladakh in the Himalayas. Two large aggressors are threatening to break apart neighbors and absorb them.

American attempts to de-escalate flashpoints are seen in Russian and Chinese circles as failures of resolve.

The Global Times, an unofficial Communist Party tabloid used by Beijing to signal new policies, on April 12 posted a video of Hu Xijin, its editor-in-chief, warning that Beijing would overfly Taiwan—in other words, fly into Taiwan’s sovereign airspace—to “declare sovereignty.”

Chinese leaders speak provocatively because, among other reasons, they do not believe the United States or others will come to Taiwan’s rescue…. In effect, China’s leaders are saying they do not believe President Joe Biden would defend Taiwan.

In a propaganda blast on April 8, China’s regime said Taiwan “won’t stand a chance” if it decides to invade the island. This Chinese self-perception of overwhelming strength is extraordinarily dangerous….

[W]e have already passed the point where just declarations and warnings will suffice. The Biden administration has yet to impose costs on China for aggressive actions jeopardizing America’s security and that of allies like Japan. Chinese leaders, while hearing the mild warnings from the Biden administration, must be asking one question: “Or what?”

Vladimir Putin in 2019 said that Russia reserved the right to protect ethnic Russians outside Russia. This month, Dmitry Kozak, deputy head of Russia’s presidential administration, said his country might intervene to “defend” its citizens. If it did, he suggested, Ukraine would not survive because it would not be “a shot in the leg, but in the face.”

The American response has not been adequate. Russians perceive Biden as feeble. “In Putin’s game of brinkmanship, Biden blinked first,” said journalist Konstantin Eggert to the BBC, referring to the American president proposing a meeting to his Russian counterpart. Biden’s “nerves,” he said, “had failed him.”

That assessment may be correct. In the face of threats directed at Washington by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, the U.S. Navy did not, as many had expected, send two destroyers through the Bosporus into the international waters of the Black Sea. Politico reported that “two U.S. officials familiar with the plans” said the cancellation was due to American concerns about inflaming the Russia-Ukraine situation….

the ultimate decision to stay away made it look as if the U.S. had backed down.

The Dragon and the Bear appear to be coordinating moves, as they have for some time. At the very least, each is acting with an eye to what the other is doing. Once one of these aggressors makes a move, the other large state, taking advantage of the situation, will almost certainly follow. Biden also has to be concerned about Moscow or Beijing acting through proxies Iran and North Korea.

All the elements for history’s next great conflict are now in place.

Russian troops are massing on the Ukraine border, Chinese vessels are swarming Whitsun Reef of the Philippines in the South China Sea, and China’s air force is flying almost daily through Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone. Chinese troops for almost a year have been dug in deep in Indian-controlled Ladakh in the Himalayas. Two large aggressors are threatening to break apart neighbors and absorb them.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/islamic_state_executes_coptic_christian_man_on_video.html

In a video released last Saturday, April 17, Muslims connected to the Islamic State executed a Coptic Christian man in Sinai, Egypt. 

The slain was identified as 62-year-old Nabil Habashi Salama.  In the video, Salama appears on his knees, with his hands cuffed behind his back; three masked men holding rifles stand behind him.  The one in the middle launches into a typical jihadi diatribe: 

“All praise to Allah, who ordered his slaves [Muslims] to fight and who assigned humiliation onto the infidels” — this latter part is said while the terrorist points at the bound and kneeling man before him — “until they pay the jizya while feeling utterly subdued.” 

This, of course, is a direct quote of Koran 9:29, which commands Muslims to “fight the people of the book,” understood as meaning Christians and Jews, “until they pay the jizya [monetary tribute] with willing submissiveness and feel themselves utterly subdued.” 

The middle speaker continued by threatening “all the crusaders of the world” — a reference to Christians in the West — while singling out the countrymen of the one about to be slain: “As for you Christians of Egypt, this is the price of your support for the Egyptian army.”

After his rant, the speaker points his rifle at the back of the bound Christian’s head — even as chants of “jihad!” blare out — and fires at point-blank range, killing him. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/alexei-navalny-hospitalized-in-russia-three-weeks-into-hunger-strike-11618839052

Jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny was hospitalized Monday, weeks after beginning a hunger strike, as the Kremlin brushed off warnings from the U.S. of repercussions if he were to die while in prison.

His hospitalization came a day after his supporters called for large-scale demonstrations to demand his release after doctors with ties to the opposition leader cited medical test results they said showed he was at risk of imminent renal failure and a possible heart attack.

Mr. Navalny, a prominent Putin critic who is serving a 2½-year prison sentence after being convicted of violating parole conditions, was transferred to a hospital for convicts within the prison system in Russia’s Vladimir region, prison authorities said Monday.

His health condition had been “assessed as satisfactory” and a doctor has been examining him every day, they said. He had also consented to being prescribed “vitamin therapy,” they added, without detailing the nature of such treatment.

Canada has signed away its future. A country that once had a great deal going for it—abundant natural resources; a vibrant energy sector; a viable debt-to-GDP ratio; a tradition of civic decorum maintained even during a brief period of Quebec-secessionist discord; an aversion to foreign adventures; and a commendable standard of living, among the highest in the world—has squandered its many advantages and blessings in an excess of poor electoral decisions and civic indifference to its national welfare. 

Of course, like any country, Canada has had its share of problems—language issues between French and English, a much-abused, asymmetrical equalization or fund-transferring formula between provinces, the Native victimhood industry—but it had managed to deal with them without protracted or endemic violence such as one sees in many other nations.

But there is no doubt that the country is dying. One has watched a steady disintegration of national unity and prosperity over the last generation. Some place the shipwreck of the country’s prospects with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program in 1980, the first move in the gradual destruction of Canada’s oil and gas producing regions, located primarily in the province of Alberta. Others target a dreary succession of incompetent, high-taxing prime ministers, culminating in the electoral victories of Justin Trudeau, inarguably the least qualified and most unpriministerial holder of high office in the entire history of Confederation.

The list of his misdemeanors, spendthrift excesses, and corrupt practices, circulated by Gordon Miller, a director of Canadians for Language Fairness, is unparalleled. We’ve had eccentrics in office many times, dating from the Father of Confederation John A. MacDonald, who was often in his cups. William Lyon MacKenzie King was a table rapper who communed with the spirits of his mother and his dog (though Michael Bliss in Right Honorable Men praises King as “Canada’s most highly-educated prime minister”). Pierre Trudeau posed as a sandal-wearing swinger and used his “swashbuckling hippie style” to advantage, effectively polarizing the nation. But nothing like the political reprobate and misfit Justin Trudeau has ever befallen this nation before. One recalls Canada’s 13th prime minister John Diefenbaker’s remark that “You can’t stand up for Canada with a banana for a backbone.” Nor with a banana anywhere else on your anatomy.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17298/turkey-afshin-sohrabzadeh

An Iranian Kurdish political refugee, Afshin Sohrabzadeh, 31, who suffers from cancer and lives in Turkey, has been held in administrative detention for deportation — for allegedly “threatening Turkey’s security”. He is currently being held in a removal center, and, if returned to Iran, he may well face the death penalty.

On April 5, he visited the Eskisehir Immigration Office to get permission to visit a friend in Ankara. Instead, he was held in administrative detention and a decision was made by the authorities to deport him back to Iran.

“Another option that will save Sohrabzadeh is that the UNCHR will step in and announce that he will be resettled in a third and safe country – other than Turkey or Iran.”

“As Turkey neighbours Iran, these refugees and their families continue to be exposed to the possibility of persecution by the Iranian intelligence agencies. At the same time, the Turkish immigration services are extremely reluctant to provide them with the administrative cooperation they need to complete their applications for asylum and resettlement in safer countries.” – Reporters Without Borders, April 30, 2020.

Turkey is bound by international law not to deport UN-recognized refugees. – Mahmut Kacan, Sohrabzadeh’s lawyer, to Gatestone, April 2021.

The UNCHR, the international media, and all human rights groups need to work to save Sohrabzadeh from arrest, torture and virtually certain death in Iran.

An Iranian Kurdish political refugee, Afshin Sohrabzadeh, 31, who suffers from cancer and lives in Turkey, has been held in administrative detention for deportation — for allegedly “threatening Turkey’s security”. He is currently being held in a removal center, and, if returned to Iran, he may well face the death penalty.

Sohrabzadeh, a political activist, was arrested and jailed in Iran in 2010, His lawyer, Mahmut Kacan, told Gatestone:

“Sohrabzadeh was arrested by Iranian authorities for joining demonstrations protesting the controversial 2009 Iranian presidential elections in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won. Sohrabzadeh was then charged with being a member of the Kurdish Komala organization, with being ‘an enemy of Allah’ and with ‘threatening Iranian national security.'”