From Minsk to Hong Kong, people power is just not working anymore Last month’s detention of an advocate in Belarus is only the latest of many signals that people must relearn how to defend their values By Will Hutton / The Observer The West’s ineffectiveness in the face of the arrant use of torture, unlawful arrest, savage imprisonment without trial and flagrant abuse of international law, even close to home in Europe, is among the bleakest symptoms of our times. The people power we saw embodied in the strikes in the Gdask shipyards in Poland, the fall of the Berlin Wall and even the Arab Spring has not presaged the new era of democracy we once hoped for.