By Aaron Miller-
Iran, Moscow, Beijing have mounted attack against the democracy of the U.S, in the wake of the senseless insurrection witnessed in Capitol Hill yesterday.
The shameful events are being used by governments as proof that the U.S is in no place to give other nations lectures on democracy. America is known for its critical positions against dictatorship regimes, some of them now rising to criticise and ridicule America.
The scenes broadcasted across the world yesterday is not reflective of the U.S democracy by any stretch of the imagination, instead it reveals the influence President Trump has on a violent section of his support base.
Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, in a speech broadcast on state television on Thursday, was scathing in his comments about the U.S democracy. He said:
“What we saw in the US last night and today really showed that first how brittle and weak western democracy is, and how weak its foundations are,” said the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, in a speech broadcast on state television on Thursday.
He referred to Trump as an “unhealthy person” and said he had “tainted his country’s reputation and credibility. He disrupted US relations with the entire world,” he said.
Russian lawmakers also attacked the U.S governments while maintaining support for President Trump’s unproven allegations of voter fraud.
“The losing side has more than enough grounds to accuse the winner of falsifications – it is clear that American democracy is limping on both feet,” wrote Konstantin Kosachev, the chair of the foreign affairs committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament, in a post on Facebook.
“America no longer charts the course and so has lost all right to set it. And, even more so, to impose it on others.”
Chinese officials drew comparisons between the violent scenes in Washington with the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
The hawkish tabloid the Global Times repeatedly drew crude comparisons between the footage of Capitol Hill and episodes from the Hong Kong protests, ignoring the diametrically opposed motivations behind the two groups. The paper quoted unnamed netizens gleefully revelling in the scenes, describing it as “karma”, “revenge”, and “deserved”.
China’s foreign affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a press conference in Beijing that the deaths in Washington showed that US police were more brutal than their Hong Kong counterparts. “While the degree of violence and destruction in Washington is not as serious as what happened in Hong Kong, four people have died,” she said.
Hua, the Global Times and China’s Communist Youth League all referenced comments by Nancy Pelosi that the Hong Kong protests were “a beautiful sight to behold”, but erroneously linked them to protesters storming the legislative council, when in fact she had said it a few days after a non-violent march of 2 million people on 16 June 201“As they say,” said the oil minister, Tareck El Aissami, “What goes around comes around.”
Restraint
Turkey’s foreign ministry also called on all parties in the US to “maintain restraint and prudence” to overcome the crisis in “a mature manner”. The parliament speaker, Mustafa Şentop, said Turkey had “always been in favour of the law and democracy and we recommend it to everyone