North Korea and Cuba’s ‘alarming’ ties
The new documentary “Under the Sun,” follows an 8-year-old North Korean girl named Zin-mi as she prepares to join the Korean Children’s Union, run by the Workers’ Party. Zin-mi and her… Read more »
Category: Dictatorships
Cuba ‘open for business’, closed to dissent
Cuba may be open for business, but it remains closed to dissent, according to a retired career American diplomat. “Despite President Obama’s best intentions, no improvement on the human rights… Read more »
Push back against the tyrants: how to counter authoritarian assault on civil society
With rising awareness that simply holding elections does not a democracy make, investments in civil society are central to democracy promotion—helping to provide the education, information, and accountability without which… Read more »
Will new Archbishop transform Cuban Church?
In the mid-1970s, a recently ordained priest trekked the Cuban countryside, defying the communist government by distributing hand-printed religious pamphlets to townspeople bold enough to open their doors, The New… Read more »
Homo Sovieticus mentality impeding democratic change in Post-Soviet space
The prospects of democracy in Belarus and Russia may be bleak, but pessimism is no excuse for inaction or apathy, according to Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich. Vladimir Putin is able… Read more »
Dalai Lama’s White House highlights China’s ‘insecurity’
President Obama met with the Dalai Lama as scheduled on Wednesday, despite objections from the Chinese government. Obama met the Dalai Lama when the latter visited Washington in 2014 and… Read more »
HK booksellers’ case shows China’s authoritarian expansion
One of the five Hong Kong booksellers who disappeared into Chinese custody last year has defied the mainland police, discussing his dramatic detention at the border with the mainland in October, his… Read more »
Re-drawing the Iron Curtain?
With ever-increasing enthusiasm, Russia claims to be the heir to the Soviet Union, and attacks on bronze, granite and plaster Lenins in Ukraine have generally been interpreted here [in… Read more »
Kazakhstan’s ‘economy first, politics later’ philosophy under strain
Kazakhstan is not a country accustomed to political instability. Nursultan Nazarbayev has enjoyed a quarter century as president of the central Asian nation on the back of rising oil… Read more »
27 years after Tiananmen, an opportunity for a political opening
Tens of thousands of people gathered in a Hong Kong park on Saturday evening to do what people across the border in mainland China could not: commemorate the anniversary of… Read more »