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11-27-2020 was the date I turned twenty years old. I did it far from home and from the land where I was born, because I had to live and escape the Chavista tragedy in Venezuela. Why did I leave with my family? Because I sought three things: life, happiness, and freedom.
In Venezuela, there is no way to live a full life with intact freedoms. For the vast majority of the country, it is an existential matter. Fighting and protecting you and your own with sheer survival instinct. Therefore, there is no life, nor is there freedom. These are two issues that dance together, if separated, the other ceases to exist. In the end, they are one and, without those two, there is no happiness either.
My experience does not give me certainty, but it does give me an idea of what is happening under the yoke of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the regime that, in 2020, has taken off its mask (once again) to show its true authoritarian face.
An anti-freedom monster
Behind the great economic growth of China, its industrial and technological evolution, and the power it has become, there is a tremendous brutality that has been against individual freedoms.
The nature of the Chinese Communist Party does not conceive of or coexist with respect for the life project of individuals. Unless you subjugate yourself to its system, which in the end would be its project, that monstrous state.
Days ago, three Hong Kong activists, Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam were taken into custody by the Chinese regime. Their crimes? “An illegal protest”.
“Maybe the authorities want me to stay in prison. But I am convinced that neither the prison bars, nor the ban on elections, nor any other arbitrary power will stop us from activism,” said Wong, one of the most representative faces of the Hong Kong democracy movement.
International repudiation? Very little. In fact, the news did not have much relevance, at least not as it should have.
The regime that has carte blanche to destroy freedom
But without going too far, throughout the year, the Chinese regime has repressed the freedom of speech like never before. If there was one thing the Chinese Communist Party did, it was to sell us its “success” in controlling the pandemic. And the West, like fools, bought it. Well, not all of us, but the sycophantic accomplices of Chinese tyranny.
The Chinese regime persecuted, censored, and imprisoned “civilian journalists” who reported on the pandemic. An unforgivable action for a regime that wanted to control the narrative around the pandemic from day one.
Although the Chinese Communist Party was primarily responsible for the rapid proliferation of COVID-19 with its initial inaction, its secrecy in revealing details, its criminal and monstrous decision not to alert the world to the danger of the virus in collusion with the WHO; they were also responsible for exporting the lockdown as a solution. A remedy that, in many cases, has turned out to be even worse than the disease.
The confinements that everyone was subjected to, did nothing but restrict liberties on the planet. Perhaps, in some cases, it worked to slow down the contagion curve, but in many cities and countries did not even achieve that.
After almost a whole year with this tragic pandemic, many politicians are still considering confinement as a solution against contagion, despite the figures of poverty, unemployment, and breaking economies —which are terrifying.
Let us make no mistake, these politicians who sell and promote quarantines are nothing but tyrants —thirsty to impose themselves over citizens. The less citizen freedom there is, the greater the climax. Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, some Democratic states in the US, all are live portraits of a “healthcare model” exported from China.
The worst is its carte blanche. Nobody puts a stop to it, nobody dares to say: Enough! Trump, perhaps, was the only one to give that battle, but few accompanied him and his reelection hangs by a very thin thread.
The Chinese Communist Party violates human rights, destroys the environment, controls the autonomy of smaller countries like Venezuela and several in the African continent. It also exports its forms of censorship, persecutes its citizens and has great interference in multilateral organizations.
The big media, instead of denouncing them and pointing fingers at them, praise their propaganda. Yes, even the big Western newspapers do that.
The other day, I read with much anguish how the Xi Jinping regime was pushing to impose a global tracking system using QR codes, with the excuse of supposedly monitoring people with any potential exposure to the coronavirus. Behind all this, of course, there is a great overreach of Chinese totalitarianism to improve its methods of social control.
If this model of tracking is exported like lockdowns, it would be something similar to the end of every shred of freedom that we still possess. Something very similar to the screens of the Big Brother in 1984 watching you and following you wherever you go.
The Chinese Communist Party has created a new art, that of destroying all freedoms and not paying the consequences.
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón is a journalist at El American specializing in the areas of American politics and media analysis // Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón es periodista de El American especializado en las áreas de política americana y análisis de medios de comunicación.
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Excellent analysis