Author Archives: DemDigest

Internet the ‘de facto forum’ for Vietnam’s dissenting voices

     

A prominent blogger and environmental activist in Vietnam was sentenced last week to 10 years in prison on charges of national security offenses, including sharing anti-state propaganda on social media, The New… Read more »

Call for applications – Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program

     

Dedicated to international exchange, the National Endowment for Democracy‘s Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program offers five-month fellowships to leading democracy activists, journalists, and scholars from around the world.  During their time… Read more »

Edward Kline, ‘silent partner’ in aiding Soviet dissidents

     

Democracy advocates are mourning the passing of a modest, unsung but highly effective supporter of Soviet dissidents. Edward Kline, a Yale math major who, bored with the department store chain… Read more »

Hong Kong – world’s only case of ‘freedom without democracy’

     

When Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule two decades ago, the city was seen as a model of what China might one day become: prosperous, modern, international, with the broad protections of the rule… Read more »

Erdogan ‘taking steps to end Turkish democracy’

     

On June 17, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced as illegitimate the ongoing protest march from the Turkish capital, Ankara, to Istanbul, organized to demand justice regarding Erdogan’s media crackdown… Read more »

Iraqi Kurdistan: Civil Society at the Crossroads

     

In 2005, Iraq’s Constitution recognized an autonomous Kurdistan region in the north of the country, run by the Kurdistan Regional Government. Today, with a referendum on independence in speculation for… Read more »

China’s treatment of Liu Xiaobo condemned as ‘a moral and political outrage’

     

The Chinese authorities have refused permission for Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace laureate paroled from prison for cancer treatment, to go abroad for care, one of his lawyers said on Thursday,… Read more »

Sliding into civil war? Venezuela’s ‘drama threatens to turn from farce to tragedy’

     

  Venezuela’s government hunted on Wednesday for rogue policemen who attacked key installations by helicopter, but critics of President Nicolas Maduro suspected the raid may have been staged to justify… Read more »