In Ghana, social media-fuelled protests seek to #FixTheCountry

Thousands of protesters filled the streets of Accra, Ghana, Aug. 4 to air their grievances against the government of President Nana Akufo-Addo and to rally for a range of social and economic reforms.

The COVID-19 pandemic and declining oil prices have pushed Ghana into an economic recession for the first time in 38 years. Akufo-Addo’s center-right New Patriotic Party is on the defensive as it attempts to reboot Ghana’s economic growth.

In May, Ghanaian police reportedly secured an injunction against a planned #FixTheCountry protest, citing public health concerns around the pandemic. 

Finally given a green light this week — and a guarantee of safety from the police chief, according to organizers — Wednesday’s rally reportedly drew people from all over the country. Some of them dressed in red and black, the colors of Ghana’s main opposition party, the center-left National Democratic Congress.

In the Mediterranean, wildfires on the coastlines as migrants approach by sea

This year alone, the planet has seen extreme weather events ranging from the unusual to the catastrophic. For the world’s 82.4 million displaced people, climate change has been both a cause of their displacement and a roadblock on their journey to safety.

The eastern Mediterranean region — long a geographic bottleneck for migrants seeking to enter Europe — has become a “wildfire hotspot,” according to the European Union’s atmospheric monitoring program. Severe drought and heat waves fueled by climate change have exacerbated the size and speed of the forest fires now engulfing parts of Turkey, Italy, Spain, Greece and several Balkan countries. Authorities have evacuated thousands menaced by fire from seaside resorts and coastal towns, in what the Greek Prime Minister called a “nightmarish summer.”

Meanwhile, more than 700 migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean in makeshift vessels were picked up by aid ships this weekend, the Agence France-Presse reported. According to the United Nations, more than 47,000 refugees and migrants arrived by sea in Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Malta in 2021 — the same countries now experiencing heat waves, drought and catastrophic fires. More than 1,000 migrants died or went missing along the dangerous route.

In Hungary, Fox’s Tucker Carlson lavishes praise onto Prime Minister Viktor Orbán

American cable news personality Tucker Carlson took a trip to Hungary this week, where he praised the authoritarian leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán both in private and on air. 

“Hungary is a serious and modern country that cares about its own citizens,” Carlson said in a televised segment aired alongside footage from a tour of a border crossing guided by Hungarian authorities. “Hungary has no desire to destroy itself, no desire to encourage misery and crime in its cities. Or for that matter, no desire to contribute to the human trafficking of people fleeing from Syria … Why can’t we have this in America?”

Since the right-wing nationalist Fidesz party took power in the 2010 parliamentary elections, Hungary has experienced democratic backsliding under Orbán’s stated policy of “illiberal democracy,” which has curtailed the independence of the press, judiciary, academia, legislative opposition and NGOs, while instituting discriminatory policies against Hungary’s Roma minority, the LGBTQ+ community and asylum seekers.

Carlson, however, smeared the research of political analysts at Freedom House — which has detailed the decline of Hungarian democracy under Orbàn — as “insane,” and suggested Hungary is “freer” than the United States is under the Biden administration.

Carlson — who regularly airs misinformation and has promoted white nationalist views on his blockbuster Fox News program — broadcast from central Budapest all week. He even attended a far-right conference in the capital on Saturday, where he gave a speech titled “The world according to Tucker Carlson.” 

Many other journalists, however, disagree with Carlson’s generally rosy view of contemporary Hungary.

“The true face of modern Hungary isn’t gleaming Budapest,” Vox reporter Zack Beauchamp wrote in a 2018 article titled “It happened there: How democracy died in Hungary.” “It’s the immense security apparatus at the border — the barbed-wire fence, the refugee boys sleeping in the dirt, the border guard making trouble for journalists — that reveals the very modern kind of authoritarian state Hungary has become.”

Just yesterday, Beauchamp emphasized his reporting in a Twitter thread. 

“The biggest problem is that Hungary’s democratic status is being treated as an open question or a secondary one,” he wrote. “This is wrong. The Orbán regime is authoritarian and that is by far the most important thing about it.”

Contact Suhail Gharaibeh at [email protected].