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China’s Transnational Harassment Exposed — With Ties to Hungary

vsquare.org China’s Transnational Harassment Exposed — With Ties to Hungary - VSquare.org

A tense situation unfolded at the United Nations Conference on Human Rights in February 2023. The UN representatives reviewed a report on China, which also addressed the oppression of the Uyghur and Tibetan minorities.

China’s Transnational Harassment Exposed — With Ties to Hungary - VSquare.org

An international team of investigative journalists has looked into how China silences its critics living abroad. Direkt36 traced the head of an organization based in Hungary, who has also been in contact with high-ranking Hungarian government politicians. A tense situation unfolded at the United Nations Conference on Human Rights in February 2023. In the elegant Wilson Palace conference room in Geneva, UN representatives reviewed a report on China, which also addressed the oppression of the Uyghur and Tibetan minorities.

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  • In the spring of 2017, a group of independent investigative journalists from the four Visegrád countries decided to join forces and create VSquare, a regional collaborative platform where they could present their investigations to an international, English-speaking audience. Warsaw-based non-profit journalistic center Reporters Foundation (Fundacja Reporterów) became the publisher of VSquare, and support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) helped to kick off the project.

    Hmmmmmmm

    In a 1991 interview with the Washington Post, NED founder Allen Weinstein said: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."[18]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy

    • On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you that Trump's fascist regime has taken out USAID following the Project 2025 plan?

      • If it means less fascist violence spread in the interests of US hegemony, then who am I to complain. Maybe you should consider that being the running dogs of the US is not a long term self-serving strategy. It would be in the best interests of Europe to understand this truth deeply. Or just carry water for the capitalist-to-fascist status quo against anyone that opposes it. What happened last time again?

        https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/the-dark-side-of-usaid

        In addition to the CIA’s covert support for the mujahideen’s holy war against the secular evils of increased living standards and women’s rights, USAID also played an interesting role in this conflict.

        The agency reportedly spent $50 million on a “jihad literacy” program in Afghanistan, primarily during the 1980s. This effort included the publication and distribution of ultra-conservative textbooks that “tried to solidify the links between violence and religious obligation,” according to author Dana Burde. Lessons on basic math and language were accompanied by depictions of Kalashnikov rifles, grenades, ammunition, and a commitment to militancy and retribution against the Russians (who were depicted as “invaders” despite having been invited to lend military assistance by the PDPA). After consolidating power in the ‘90s, the Taliban government revised and reprinted these textbooks, and copies have even been found in Pakistan as recently as 2013.

        Assisting the Taliban’s precursor with reactionary, jihadist propaganda to viciously sabotage a progressive, feminist government and its allies is a strange form of “humanitarianism.” You might even say it’s the opposite of humanitarianism.

        In 2014, the Associated Press reported on a USAID plan to use HIV-prevention workshops to secretly “[recruit] a younger generation of opponents to Cuba’s Castro government.” After being exposed, the scheme proved profoundly embarrassing to the U.S. political establishment and detrimental to the reputation of Western aid organizations. But this was not the first USAID regime change plot to be exposed that year. The agency had also set up a Twitter-inspired app called ZunZuneo in 2010 in an attempt to “build a base of unsuspecting Cuban users, and then introduce rumors and misinformation to destabilize the country’s socialist government.”

        More recently, USAID was caught funding rappers and other artists to, as Russiagate conspiracy theorists would say, “sow political discord” in Cuban society (but it’s okay when we do it). Thankfully, all of these tactics have failed and the Cuban Revolution lives on.

        For its part, USAID provided $128 million in funding to the would-be dictator and his collaborators, and an additional $307 million to Venezuela’s right-wing political opposition more broadly, including for use in plots that were condemned by the International Red Cross and the United Nations. Reporting by the L.A. Times even revealed that $41.9 million in aid was diverted from Guatemala and Honduras and redirected to Guaidó and his fellow insurrectionists “to pay for their salaries, airfare, ‘good governance’ training, propaganda, technical assistance for holding elections and other ‘democracy-building’ projects.”

        This was not the first time USAID was involved in the imperialist sabotage of Venezuela’s ongoing socialist project. During the years prior to the Guaidó debacle, the agency also played a central role in a conspiracy to meddle in Venezuela’s elections by weaponizing social media (again, it’s only bad when Russia does it).

        Similar to their recent efforts in Cuba and Venezuela, the U.S. meddled in the politics of Nicaragua through a complex network of “aid” organizations and right-wing media outlets. One of the most notorious institutions USAID has supported is called the Chamorro Foundation, which is “run by one of the richest and most powerful family dynasties in Nicaragua.” The organization was complicit in a violent coup attempt against Ortega in 2018 and is now under investigation for money laundering.

        Despite its reputation among American liberals as a benevolent humanitarian organization, USAID is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is a Trojan horse for Western imperialism — an insidious, destabilizing force that causes far more harm to the Global South than any “good” resulting from its ostensible assistance. And, despite far-right delusions about the agency in question supposedly being composed of “radical left lunatics,” its history reveals consistent and relentless opposition toward leftist movements around the world.

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