The UN has issued a report on violent deaths in Iraq over a 20-month period. The number of civilians killed is very high: almost 19,000 from January 2014 to October 2015. In addition, the UN estimates that as many as 3,500 women and girls are being held as slaves by Daesh (the Islamic State). The UN accuses Daesh for most of those deaths, but the instability in Iraq can be explained more prosaically as an attempt by the minority Sunni population in Iraq to regain its position of predominance in the country when Saddam Hussein was in charge.
Taiwan’s opposition party, the Democratic Progress Party, won a stunning victory in the recent Presidential election. The President-elect, Tsai Ing-wen, is the first woman to lead the island country, and she has, in the past, advocated for independence from China. Most of the world has accepted the fact that Taiwan is in fact part of China and not an independent state–a recognition signaled by US President Nixon in 1972. Tsai has indicated that she will not seek Taiwanese independence, but her election clearly indicates dissatisfaction with the island’s previous policy of rapprochement with China.
The rise of right-wing parties in Europe is a topic of great concern to the supporters of liberal democracy. There are, however, states in what used to be called eastern Europe that have already embraced “illiberal” democracy (presumably a form of democracy that offers few, if any, protections for individual freedoms, although the term “illiberal” has never been precisely defined. The leader of Hungary, Viktor Orban has declared that his objective for the country is an illiberal democracy. Now, however, the largest eastern European state and one of the most important states on the continent, Poland, seems to be moving in the same direction. Non-citizens of those states, including immigrants and refugees, have much to fear from this turn to the right.
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