EA by Eva Chipiuk, BSc, LLB, LLM@echipiuk

Via X

January 17 2026

People came together to protest draconian government mandates. They gathered peacefully, seeking dialogue, accountability, and respect for their basic rights. Standing up to government overreach is not extremism, it is our civic duty.

They were met not with conversation, but with force.

Instead of engagement, protesters were disparaged and vilified, portrayed as the worst elements of society, despite being ordinary people exercising fundamental freedoms.

A government-initiated inquiry followed, but instead of a neutral search for truth, it became a forum to target protesters, using public resources to cast them as the enemy, while the commissioner asserted, without hesitation, that the high threshold for invoking the Emergencies Act had been met.

We now know (many of us always knew) what the government did was unlawful. And more than that, it shattered public trust. How do you come back from that? Can we, when the government went that far?

People were disparaged.

People were beaten.

People were arrested.

People were jailed.

People had their bank accounts frozen.

People were publicly shamed and socially ostracized, pitted against their own families, friends, and neighbours.

All of this was enabled with the full weight of the state, its institutions, messaging, enforcement powers, and public resources, was weaponized against ordinary people instead of used to protect their rights.

The media was complicit.

Elected officials either led the charge, amplified the rhetoric, or stayed silent when it mattered most.

So after all of this, a simple question remains:

Who is the real enemy of the people?

And perhaps the more important question:

What are they so afraid of?