The Press : The Whole World Watches--and Reacts--to L.A. Riots

The spotlight that draws world attention to Los Angeles is usually the one that focuses on its entertainment industry. But last week’s turmoil in the wake of the Rodney King trial verdict changed all that.

A sampling of international comment:

“What’s been burning in Los Angeles . . . is not only the old warehouses and poorhouses . . . of a black community. . . . What’s burning is the ‘bonfire of illusions.’ . . . Los Angeles is paying today what other cities and nations tempted by the same illusions could be called upon to pay tomorrow: the price of indifference and of judicial disgrace which protects the (white) police attackers and condemns the (black) victims; which acquits a Kennedy and condemns a Tyson for the same crime of rape.”

-- La Repubblica, Rome

“The court verdict dramatically showed how weak the rights of the black minority are in front of the white majority (in the United States). . . . It is impossible to just nod at the fact that among the 12 jurors there was not a single black. Nor can one discard the possibility that distrust of the jury system may grow. One also wonders whether the jurors feared retaliation from the police.”

-- Asahi, Tokyo

“Desegregation has enabled many black Americans to better themselves and join the middle class. However, the Great Society’s welfare programs have left the remainder in a ghetto, abandoned by the more able blacks, who have moved to better districts, pathetically dependent on state handouts and the victims of sloppy liberal thinking on education and crime prevention. Add easy access to guns and powerful drugs such as crack, and you have a jobless, illiterate and violent sub-class.

“If there is a way out of this cul-de-sac, it lies in better administration of social programs. Welfare benefits must be made contingent on efforts to seek vocational training and work. Standards in schools should be raised and the courts should show less lenience to those who break the law. In the wake of the King case, this may sound harsh. But the liberal excesses of the past generation have done many blacks a great disservice. They need an incentive to better themselves, not an excuse for self-pity.”

-- The Daily Telegraph, London

“The United States advocates equality and freedom through democracy in the international field, but within its own country, it continues to have prejudice and discrimination against colored people. And the anger of blacks accumulated from the frustrations of that discrimination is the undercurrent of this riot. The seriousness of the problem of America as a multiracial nation lies in the fact that the minority and the weaker race is venting its anger on Koreans who are even more a minority and weaker in American society. . . .

“The Korean community in the United States should also take a closer look at its lifestyle and engage in self-reflection. Koreans in the United States have built a community through diligence and faithfulness. This also has been a subject of envy from Americans of different minority races. What the Koreans in America should improve is their measures to deal with such envious feelings. If we accumulate wealth, we must also be prepared to share that wealth with other members of the community.”

-- Joong Ang Daily, Seoul

“For the majority of whites in America, the black ghettos of the devastated city centers are as wholly foreign and distant a part of the Third World as any township in South Africa.”

-- Der Standard, Vienna

“No democracy can afford to be smug about such explosions. In the contest with socialism and Communism, free-market democracies have proved their indisputable superiority. But they have not yet adequately addressed the problems of internal national rivalries, ethnic tensions and socio-economic chasms.”

--Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem

“Since the Los Angeles judicial system could not do justice in the King case, in addition to frustration and depression felt by individuals, the black youth of Los Angeles utilized violent methods to release their anger. In the process they received the sympathy and support of blacks in other parts of the country. These blacks feel that if the incident is not made big and noisy, the problems will not be solved; if they don’t carry out their protest battle, it will send the police the wrong message: that police can behave any way they like towards blacks.”

--Wen Hui Bao in People’s Daily, Beijing

“Of course, in a capitalist economy, there are winners and losers. It cannot be otherwise. But any advanced society which allows to develop a huge, under-employed, under-educated, impoverished sub-class living in violence-racked, drug-ridden slums is storing up for itself the sort of trouble the United States is now experiencing.”

-- Hong Kong Standard, Hong Kong

“The events in the U.S.A. are evidence--again--of the sense of exclusion by which minorities feel themselves victimized in the country that was conceived to be a paradise of opportunities for all of its citizens, and even for the millions it has welcomed as immigrants.”

-- Folha de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

“The United States is the country that read us the Riot Act, over and over again, on democracy, civil rights and treatment of blacks. How many times the ugly violence in our own streets was used to bash us . . . “Yes, we were racists. Yes, we treated our blacks abominably. Yes, apartheid was a despicable, racist philosophy. We have admitted it. . . .

“Our advice to the United States is: Sort out your own racial problems and leave us to sort out our own. As L.A. has shown, you are not a great example to us.”

-- The Citizen, Johannesburg

“How in (communist) times would the press have covered disturbances in the black quarters of Los Angeles? As a protest against the tyranny of the police, period. It would have been straightforward, simple to understand and not too far from the truth at first glance. . . .

“(But) law enforcement organs of Los Angeles like everywhere else in America suffer an acute lack of personnel and means. . . . (Los Angeles) municipal authorities, like the Moscow mayor’s office, complain of holes in the budget.”

-- Yuri Ustimenko, for Itar-Tass news agency, Moscow

“The acquittal of four American policemen whose brutal conduct towards a black motorist was documented by video film before the whole world is a disgrace for U.S. justice. But it cannot serve as an excuse for the blind rage of an incited mob. Both events are much more symptoms of a highly dangerous inflection in American society. The verdict symbolizes the--well-founded--fears of many white American citizens who feel threatened by the explosive, proliferating crime among underprivileged blacks.”

-- Muenchner Merkur, Munich

“In the 19th Century and the earlier decades of this one, the migrant races who flocked across the Atlantic to forge a new life for themselves fused together into a new people: The American people. No longer. Now America is divided and ruled by an obsession with all things ethnic. The great society is becoming tribalized. . . .

“Only a titanic assertion of federal authority through the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court can halt this fearsome slide into racial anarchy. . . . America itself is on trial. Its justice mocked by prejudice. Its very nationhood rent by race.”

-- Daily Mail, London

“The consequences of the Los Angeles riots may be enormous. . . . If George Bush wants to get reelected, he may be forced to change his position on the dramatic alternative, ‘isolationism vs. the world.’ That means there will be less interest and means to help a world ridden by unrest, including Eastern Europe.”

-- Obserwator, Warsaw

“If these events take place in America as a result of a mistaken court judgment, as a number of officials and congressmen have said . . . how can the United States undertake to try on its territory two Libyans . . . accused of blowing up an American aircraft over Lockerbie in Scotland four years ago?

” . . . Where are the guarantees for justice that America can give in the Libyan case . . . after this serious legal setback . . . to reassure the world . . . of the truth and integrity of whatever ruling may emerge?”

-- Al Ahram, Cairo

“Right after the horror came the miracle of Los Angeles. Television showed it to us. The last flames of the fires were still burning when, by the thousands, the inhabitants of Los Angeles, men, women, boys, girls, young, not so young, the old, whites, blacks, the not-so-white, the not-so-black, Asians and Browns--in short, the Americans--descended on the streets with pails, brooms, rakes and their bare hands, to wash away the scars and shame of the drama from their city as quickly as possible. Even more importantly, to show that they are not afraid to live together.”

-- Le Figaro , Paris