(CN) — Twenty months into the coronavirus pandemic, a weary world is seeing protests – many violent – break out around the globe with people in vaccine-rich Western countries angry over the introduction of strict vaccination regimes and people in poorer nations fed up with broken economies and their governments' inability to bring the pandemic under control.
It's a picture that depicts what the World Health Organization has been warning about for weeks: The pandemic is creating a dangerous two-track world where there are too many vaccines being stockpiled in richer countries and not nearly enough in poorer ones.
Early Monday morning, after a week of debates that went into the night, the French parliament passed a controversial law that will make it soon mandatory to show a so-called “health pass” to get into cafes, restaurants, cinemas, trains, buses and most other indoor public spaces.
French President Emmanuel Macron, facing reelection in April and the threat of a new wave of infections, on July 12 took a gamble by taking the global lead to effectively make vaccination mandatory for anyone choosing to live a normal life in France.
The legislation has sparked large street protests across France and clashes with police in Paris have turned very ugly with police tackling people to the ground and spraying tear gas to disperse angry crowds. Although a large majority of French support Macron's tough measures, large numbers see the new vaccine passports as tyrannical.
On Monday, while on a visit to French Polynesia, Macron urged national unity and asked, “What is your freedom worth if you say to me ‘I don’t want to be vaccinated,’ but tomorrow you infect your father, your mother or myself?”
He said there are “people who are in the business of irrational, sometimes cynical, manipulative mobilization” against vaccination.
Similar passports are being introduced or contemplated in many other countries where vaccines are plentiful – such as in Great Britain, Italy, Greece and Australia. All four countries also have witnessed clashes between protesters and police in recent days. Videos show wild scenes of incidents where protesters assaulted riot police and lines of police have attacked demonstrators. The United States is witnessing its own protests.
While frustration is high with policies to force all adults to get vaccinated in richer countries, protests in poorer countries make for a far more dangerous cocktail of unrest.
On Sunday, massive violent protests broke out in Tunisia over a spike in coronavirus cases and growing anger over slow vaccination in that North African nation.
By Monday the country was thrown into a major crisis when President Kais Saied sacked Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, the leader of a rival party with an Islamist background, suspended parliament and declared he was taking over the reins of the government. Mechichi's party, Ennahda, called it a “coup against the Tunisian democracy.”
Tunisia is seen as a beacon of hope for democratic progress in the Arab world, but now the country of 11.8 million people faces an uncertain, and potentially, perilous turn of events. The 2011 Arab Spring protests began in Tunisia and saw Tunisians bring down long-time ruler Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, seen by many as a dictator. Tunisia was the only success story from the Arab Spring.
Similarly, major protests have erupted in Cuba and South Africa as frustration mounts among populations devastated by their pandemic-crumpled economies.
Earlier this month, South Africa was gripped by the worst riots since the end of apartheid. More than 330 people were killed over five days and looters ransacked hundreds of stores in shopping malls and industrial parks in the cities of Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban. The riots in Durban forced South Africa's largest refinery to shut down temporarily and roads were closed. The riots were sparked by the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma on corruption charges, but experts say the pandemic's economic toll played a big part in making the riots so massive and violent.
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