Stirrings of unrest around the world could portend turmoil as economies collapse

The health crisis has come as a boon for some authoritarian leaders, empowering them to introduce the kind of controls on their citizens they could only have dreamed of before the spread of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.In Kenya as of Saturday, as many people had died in police crackdowns on citizens defying curfew as of covid-19, according to human rights groups and government statistics.But the restrictions aimed at halting the coronavirus are also causing new poverty, new misery and new rumblings of discontent among the world’s working poor, for whom hunger can appear to be a more immediate threat than being infected.As leaders seize powers to fight coronavirus, fear grows for democracy“I’d rather die of the virus than die of hunger, or see my son or my wife go hungry, but I can’t provide them with food,” said Hussein Fakher, 20, who used to earn a little less than $20 a day driving a tuk-tuk in a now-shuttered market in Baghdad. Another showed the flaming figure of a Syrian refugee running in a field, after he set himself on fire because he was unable to feed his family.Another man died after setting himself on fire in Tunisia, where the spark of the Arab Spring was lit nearly a decade ago by the self-immolation of a fruit seller told by a police officer that he was not allowed to sell on the streets.The next round of unrest in the Arab world could be uglier and more violent than the organized protest movements that have sought political reforms, said Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.“I fear social explosions,” he said. “But the root causes of the protests — the economy, poverty and corruption — are not going away,” Fathollah-Nejad said.A second or third wave of coronavirus infections could rattle even authoritarian states such as China, where the ruling Communist Party has maintained a tight grip on its citizens for the past three decades by delivering soaring prosperity in return for political loyalty.The announcement by the Chinese authorities on Friday that the Chinese economy had shrunk by 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020, marking the country’s first recession since capitalist-style reforms unleashed explosive growth in the 1990s, was a reminder that the social contract could be at risk, said Yasheng Huang, a professor with the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.When other counties are giving away money to help citizens fight against #COVID2019, Business Tenants in Wuhan have to protest for a rent reduction under #covid19They just want to live through the toughest time.😢 pic.twitter.com/G5r05WYFVWDozens of people in the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus first emerged late last year, took to the streets to demand rent forgiveness after lockdown restrictions were lifted earlier this month.