From Minsk to Hong Kong, people power just isn’t working any more, and that is a threat to every one of us Will Hutton
The west’s ineffectiveness in the face of the arrant use of torture, unlawful arrest, savage imprisonment without trial and flagrant abuse of international law, even close to home in Europe, is among the bleakest symptoms of our times.
The people we saw in the strikes at the Gdańsk shipyards, the fall of the Berlin Wall and even the Arab spring has not presaged the new era of democracy we once hoped for. Instead, the 21st century is becoming the era of agile autocracy and vicious strongman rule.
