The Silent Curtain

Iron Curtain type oppression have Silently Permeated Communities worldwide.

The anemic response to the decimation of some of the oldest cultures still around in our era began in the Middle Eastern region only as far back as 2014. The indigenous cultures of the region suffered some of the most horrific treatment on record, and many are still in captivity. Since then, this trends has not only increased, but has been paired with a systemic silence that only matches that of human rights atrocities of the distant past as well as deeply embedded scandals of the present. This ensures that our era will be looked back upon as one that forgot its humanity and moral fibre.

The legitimization of brutality seems to be aligned with the rubber stamp of authenticity in 2025. The reaction to Syria’s very recent treatment of its minority communities was met with ignorance as well as the lifting of sanctions and funding, continuing with on the ground support from NATO allies itself. This all occurring during an active targeting of these communities, with responsive support being the first act of new leaders in the West. The rightful championing of a fight against tyranny in places like Ukraine were treated in the exact opposite manner in countries that were once the best of Western allies, still having their ex-patriot populations living in fear, even inside safe Western countries.

The War in Ukraine could not have been more different to the fall of democratic Hong Kong. Hong Kong became part of Greater China in 1997, but was to have its democratic values enshrined when China who took over the territory at the end of a treaty agreement. Over the last few years, Hong Kong has lost much of its democratic character and control, with protesters being subject to censorship and arrest. This core change in Hong Kong was not only ignored by its Western allies and Commonwealth nations, ones that shared a similar Government system to Hong Kong, but was done in almost complete silence and denial by its former Western allies. Hong Kong was a democratic cousin of the Commonwealth, abandoned by its own Parliamentary Democratic family. It could not have been a more different response to the fight to free Ukraine.

The current situation in Hong Kong is one that mirrors that of a Milan Kundera novel. An author known for his internal characterisations of those living under the Iron Curtain in former Czechoslovakia, Kundera spoke of the lives of those terrorized by the threat that their neighbours, and even family members, would report them to the KGB style secret police. The denial of speech required universal and persistent observation, producing a mental tyranny where the fear of almost certain death at the hands of their own Government was their reality. Kundera’s work gained many readers in other regions of the world as well, being well known in Latin America as military dictatorships oppressed individuals in a similar fashion. To the oppressed, the title of their oppressor makes no difference if the end results brings you to the same fate. As for Hong Kong, we hope that our closest democratic cousins are able to enshrine their freedoms wherever they currently reside.

The silence in some Western countries seem to run quite deep, and the shocking revelation during an election campaign shows this evidence quite clearly. Upon meeting a Czechoslovak scientist in the past, I was made aware by her that under Communism, no one truly believed their Government, but in our country in the West, people believe whatever they were told. This truth became very apparently when during the current election, a man who was appointed to be Prime Minister outside of any citizen vote, made it clear that reporting a fellow citizen to a foreign Government’s secret police by one of his active Ministers was not considered a crime or even a grave offense by himself or his party currently in power. The thought that a foreign agent can oppress a citizen of a Western country, and have its sitting Government support it inside of that same country, is something out of the worst nightmares of a Kundera novel. Even dissidents during the Cold War could expect sanctuary and safety in the West as Kundera had sought for himself to avoid arrest for the crime of “authoring”. While the past era would have resulted in such a government being sanctioned by all of its allies immediately upon hearing of the oppression of one of its citizens and opposing candidates, this act has been normalised in the middle of an election campaign right on the other side of the US border. Much like for Hong Kong, for minorities in the Middle East and thousands of other cases since 2014, oppression operating in silence in all parts of the world is becoming horrifyingly systemic.