China, USA, Myanmar: Democracy Under Threat

WASHINGTON - A call between newly inaugurated US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping marked the first formal communication between the two leaders since the former’s entry into office. The content of the call is said by the White House to have covered many topics, but what stood out to many was the critical tone that the US President took in regard to a number of China’s current policies. The White House issued a statement stating that Biden raised “fundamental concerns” regarding Beijing’s “coercive and unfair economic practices, the crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan."

Despite having congratulated Biden on his election and expressing hope for a fruitful bilateral partnership, President Xi is said to have emphasized that issues relating to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang were part of "China's internal affairs" and urged America to respect this and act cautiously.

The call between the leaders of the world's two largest economies comes just three weeks after Biden's inauguration. This discussion came following an internal review of U.S. policy toward China by the previous Trump administration, and extensive consultation with America's allies, officials from the US stated.

Biden’s call for attention to be drawn to Beijing’s human rights violations in Taiwan, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong is echoed by Cinema for Peace’s ongoing campaign demanding the release of Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, and the thousands of other political prisoners similarly held behind Chinese prison bars. Within its first month alone, this campaign has garnered the support of hundreds of parliamentarians and lawmakers from across the G20.

Joshua remotely joined Cinema for Peace at the Bundestag screening of Ai Weiwei’s Wuhan documentary Coronation in September, and more can be learned about him through the film Joshua: Teenager vs Superpower, available to watch on Netflix.

Watch the trailer to the film 'Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower' by Joe Piscatella

CHINA - A Global Threat to Democracy

LONDON - Boris Johnson has said his government is “prioritizing” China’s systematic persecution of Uyghur Muslims in the province of Xinjiang despite whipping his own MPs to vote against their conscience on the matter.

As former detainees of China’s Uyghur detention camps in Xinjiang emerge with first-person testimonies of the alleged use of sexual violence as a way of oppression, a team of British lawyers, commissioned by a group of human rights organizations, makes a case of genocide against Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Activists, including the Uyghur Muslim Congress, say China has felt no significant pressure to change its policy of extra-judicial detention, through which hundreds of thousands of Uyghur citizens have passed. Many remain detained, either in vast “re-education” camps or as forced laborers.

The PM said the government had raised the issue at the UN and asked companies to consider their supply chains to ensure that products such as cotton are not sourced from China’s east. Cinema for Peace, as part of its “Threats to Democracy” campaign, has called for similar economic impositions to be placed upon Beijing until human rights standards are upheld. Uyghurs: Prisoners of the Absurd is a 2014 exposé of the unjust conditions that these Eastern Chinese Muslims face. It can be streamed via the National Film Board of Canada.

BEIJING - In what seems to be a retaliative move, BBC World News has been banned from airing in China, according to a statement from China's National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) on Thursday.

This censorship announcement comes one week after Ofcom, the British media regulator, said it had withdrawn a license for China Global Television Network, or CGTN, to broadcast in the United Kingdom. The statement released by China's NRTA claimed that BBC World News had broadcast reports on China that "infringed the principles of truthfulness and impartiality in journalism."

This is just the latest in the acts of increasing internal and foreign censorship imposed by Beijing, with access to foreign platforms such as Google being restricted since 2010.

TRUMP - A National Threat to Democracy 

WASHINGTON - As the current US president was making his first diplomatic call to Beijing, the prosecution was laying its case to rest in the impeachment trial of former US President Donald Trump. The Democrat-led impeachment alleges that the former president is responsible for inciting the January 6th insurrection riots on the Capitol. The prosecution deployed a variety of evidence to back up this claim, including the words of riot participants themselves, and accounts from police, intelligence staff, and foreign media officials.

This is the second impeachment trial Mr. Trump has faced during his four-year administration of the country. While his first impeachment, in early 2019, pertained to an alleged use of quid-pro-quo for personal political gain and demanded his removal from office, this current trial comes several weeks after the official end of his term. Rather than shun Mr. Trump from current office, the stated goals of this impeachment are to set a precedent of intolerance toward the kind of violent and divisive language disseminated by Mr. Trump. In the words of Congressman Ted Lieu speaking to the trial proceedings, “It's about the future".

The 2020 film, Totally Under Control was secretly filmed in the run-up to the US election and sheds light on the failures of the Trump administration, at a time when the poorly-handled coronavirus response was responsible for the loss of over 200,000 American lives. The film is currently available for streaming on Amazon Prime.

Watch the trailer to the film 'Totally Under Control' by Alex Gibney

MYANMAR-  A Military Threat to Democracy 

MYANMAR - Tens of thousands of people in Myanmar are turning out in daily street protests as anger grows against the recent government coup.

The military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi's democratically-elected government on the 1st February, alleging without evidence that elections her party won by a landslide had been marred by fraud. Protestors fear that troops will eventually be deployed to quell the civil disobedience.

Watch the trailer to the film 'This Prison Where I Live' by Rex Bloomstein which was initiated by Cinema for Peace