By Scott Taylor
The western media reports of late have been quick to condemn authoritarian regimes for their excessive use of force against civilian protestors. For more than six months now Hong Kong riot police have battled the pro-democracy mobs of this former British colony.
The pro-democracy protestors have expressed their anger at encroaching control over Hong Kong by the Beijing China authorities, through a steady stream of violent riots.
Pro-democracy activists retorted to pelting riot police with petrol bombs and even engaged them with bows and arrows. The world condemned the Hong Kong police for aggressively arresting these pro-democracy types even when protestors shut down the Hong Kong airport for days and occupied a university campus.
Far more effective in making their case for democracy was the recent landslide victory for Hong Kong’s anti-Beijing majority electorate in the civil election. Despite this clear message being sent to the Hong Kong administration that reform is necessary, the protests continue.
While it is true that the Hong Kong police have employed clouds of tear gas and riot batons against these protestors, the fact is that to date, there has not been a single fatality in all of these clashes on either side of the battle lines.
While we are quick to condemn the Chinese for their ruthless response, I would hazard a guess that if U.S. rioters hurled petrol bombs at American police, there would be gunfire, and lots of it.
For weeks now, Iran has faced a widespread outbreak of civil unrest. Iranians are enraged at the suffering they must endure as a result of the USA’s embargo against the Tehran regime. That regime has not shown as much restraint in their security forces’ use of lethal force. It is estimated that hundreds of Iranian youth have been killed in the unrest with thousands more injured.
So a deserved condemnation is due to Iranian leadership for allowing their population to be so brutally oppressed in this manner.
This then brings us to the situation in Iraq where we have a total of 700 military personnel deployed – some 250 of them working as trainers to the Iraqi security forces. Almost unreported in the western media has been the fact that for the past two and a half months, Iraq too has been awash in violent unrest. The initial response from the Baghdad regime was to deploy the NATO trained security forces to restore order. Like Iran, the Iraqi force did not show the restraint of the Hong Kong police, and escalated almost immediately to shooting protestors with live ammunition.
The genesis for the current upheaval stems from an almost universal fatigue on the part of Iraqi youth to cope with the intrinsic corruption of the Baghdad regime. Yes folks, that would be the same corrupt Baghdad regime that Canadian troops are deployed to support.
Unlike many of Iraq’s previous violent clashes, which involved intersectarian violence between Sunni and Shiites – this time it is a unified front against corruption.
To date some estimates put the death toll at over one thousand with 10,000 injured.
In a rare move, Iraqi’s Chaldean Christian Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako last week declared they were cancelling Christmas in Iraq to stand in solidarity with the Sunni and Shiite protestors.
Further complicating the matter earlier this month, Iraq’s Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi stepped down to appease the protestors, but all this accomplished was to leave this embattled country leaderless.
In a bizarre understatement, Major-General Jennie Carignan, the current Canadian commander of the NATO mission in Iraq told the Globe and Mail “we can see there is some work to do on now [Iraqi officials] structure and organize themselves for crisis management.”
The security forces we trained are greasing protestors in the streets by the hundreds to prop up a vacant regime and Carignan’s observation is that there is room for improvement?
No crap Sherlock!
Canada should never have deployed to Iraq. Our mission there was never clear and now it has lost all meaning. If we wish to maintain the moral high ground to chastise brutal regimes like Beijing and Tehran, Canada needs to stop propping up one in Baghdad.
