World
Mexican President considers cancelling US trip
Mexico City: Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto is considering scrapping his visit to the US on Tuesday as President Donald Trump signed an order to construct a wall between the two nations. President Donald Trump’s action on Wednesday to sign the executive order to beef up America’s deportation force and construction of the wall, were enough to prompt Pena Nieto to consider scrapping his plans to visit the White House, the New York Times quoted Mexican officials as saying.
In a video message delivered over Twitter on Wednesday night, Pena Nieto did not mention whether he would cancel the meeting, saying future steps would be taken in consultation with Mexican lawmakers, the New York Times reported. Pena Nieto reiterated his commitment to protect the interests of Mexico and its people. He chided Washington’s move to continue with the wall construction. “I regret and condemn the US’ decision to continue with the construction of a wall that, far from uniting us, divides us,” the Mexican President said.
Trump during his election campaign called Mexican immigrants rapists, threatened to deport millions of them and promised to build a wall to keep others out. Now, the perceived insults endured during the campaign have turned into action. According to the New York Times, decades of friendly relations between the US and Mexico — on matters involving trade, security and migration — seemed to be unravelling.
On Twitter, Trump’s action was referred to by politicians and historians as “an offence to Mexico”, a “slap in the face” and a “monument to lies”. “It is an unprecedented moment for the bilateral relationship,” said Genaro Lozano, a professor at the Iberoamerican University here. “In the 19th century, we fought a war with the US. Now we find ourselves in a low-intensity war, a commercial one over Nafta and an immigration war due to the measures he just announced,” he said.
With North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) gone, both countries would likely suffer significant damage to their economies, and Mexico could see a sharp decline in foreign investment. During a rally, leftist politician Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador asked Pena Nieto to appeal to the UN and accused the US President of “violating human rights” and of racism. Lopez Obrador, who ran a close race against Pena Nieto for President in 2012, said Trump’s actions were “a great opportunity for Pena to begin his defence of Mexican immigrants, with steadiness and dignity”.
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
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