Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign and subsequent election victory may have polarized America, but his inauguration as president also drew mixed reactions across the world.
While world leaders issued measured and carefully worded statements of congratulations to the 45th president of the U.S.A., regular citizens didn’t hold back, whether in praising him or expressing their disapproval.
Protesters in many parts of the world, including Canada, burned effigies of Trump and chanted slogans, while right-wing figures in some countries heralded a Trump presidency as aiding their nations’ interests.
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Trump targeted few countries like he did Mexico during his campaign. In Mexico City, protesters used boxes to build a makeshift wall outside the US embassy.
In his campaign, Trump derided Mexicans as rapists and criminals and vowed to build a wall along the southern U.S. border to keep them out.
He has vowed to move fast on building the wall — and make Mexico pay for it.
Mexican protesters disagreed.
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“We are against the construction of the wall and we’re marching because the Mexican government has not faced up to Donald Trump’s threats like the people have wanted,” said one unidentified protester.
Around 4,000 kilometers south of Mexico City, protesters in the Peruvian capital Lima took to the aptly-named Washington Park to protest Trump’s inauguration.
His vow to tear up the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, which advances free trade among Pacific Rim countries, has also not gone over well in the South American country, a signatory to the deal.
The 70-year-old president has drawn the ire of many Latin Americans for his anti-immigration sentiments and vows to deport millions of undocumented migrants.
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Meanwhile, halfway across the world in Palestine, protesters set fire and stamped on posters of the new president.
Demonstrators gathered near the separation wall in the West Bank city of Bethlehem and were watched by Israeli soldiers from the watch tower as they protested.
Activists put up anti-Trump posters on the wall to show their anger at the president’s vow to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
“We came here to tell the whole world that what Trump is doing is against all the international agreements and the Palestinian rights. Today we are here to say that the Palestinian nation has a right to have Jerusalem as an eternal capital,” said Palestinian activist Monther Amira.
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There were also protests among citizens of some of the United States’ closest European allies.
In London, activists draped a banner across the iconic Tower Bridge reading “Build bridges not walls,” a reference to Trump’s promise to wall off the U.S.-Mexico border.
Several hundred protesters also rallied outside the U.S. embassy in London on Friday. The demonstration, organised by Stand Up To Racism, saw people target the Trump administration’s views on migrants, Muslims, women, gay people and climate change.
In Berlin, hundreds of protesters gathered near the office of the right-wing political party AfD and in front of the landmark Brandenburg Gate.
Protesters likewise took to the streets in Australia and New Zealand.
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Demonstrations also took place in several Asian cities including Manila, the capital of the Philippines, where about 200 demonstrators from a nationalist group rallied for about an hour outside the U.S. embassy.
Some held up signs demanding U.S. troops leave the Philippines while others set fire to a paper U.S. flag bearing a picture of Trump’s face.
In Tokyo, several hundred people, most of them expatriate Americans, marched along a downtown street holding electric candles or placards reading “Love Trumps Hate” and “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.”
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But a few dozen Japanese conservatives celebrated Donald Trump’s inauguration at a restaurant in the city of Fukuoka, CNN reports.
“Trump is such an honest, outspoken person who has the same way of political thinking as us,” event organizer Yoko Mada told the network.
“What conservatives in Japan have been wanting is to bring this nation out of the so-called post-war regime, and one symbolic thing would be us owning our own military again, which Trump supports.”
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In Nigeria, more than a thousand supporters of a southern secessionist movement took to the streets to welcome Trump, hoping he will end what they see as the “Islamisation” of the West African nation.
Southern Nigeria is mostly Christian while Islam is the majority faith in the north.
Trump has hardly mentioned Africa during his election campaign. But his views about curbing Muslim immigration have scored well in southern Nigeria where many complain of neglect from President Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim from the north.
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They have also scored well among some groups in India, specifically those with far-right Hindu nationalist leanings.
In the Indian capital New Delhi, a group of people gathered and cheered around a banner that featured the words “Donald J. Trump Coronation Ceremony” displayed above pictures of Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In November, New Delhi-based members of the Hindu Sena, or Hindu Army, celebrated Trump’s “victory” in advance of Election Day.
Trump uttered the memorable phrase “I love Hindu” at a cultural event in New Jersey in October organized by supporters of his candidacy from the Indian diaspora.
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A celebratory mood also took over parts of Slovenia, the birthplace of Trump’s wife, Melania.
Restaurants and cafes in the southeastern town of Sevnica served Melania cakes, Melania pancakes and Presidential Burgers to celebrate the ascension of the town’s most famous daughter to the role of first lady of the United States of America.
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The local municipality invited tourists and journalists to Sevnica on Friday to join in the celebrations.
It was in Sevnica that Melania, born in 1970 when Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia, spent most of her youth in a flat in the town centre before moving to the capital Ljubljana to attend high school.
— With files from Reuters
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