Arab Spring: Unfinished business or tragic legacy?
The uprisings of the Arab Spring seemed to represent a dramatic turning point in history, the sudden collapse of regimes and political systems few expected to be so fragile. But… Read more »
Category: Dissidents
‘Unprecedented’ protest movement’s triple challenge to Cuban regime
Members of Cuba’s San Isidro Movement – the group of artists, academics, and other alternative thinkers who garnered global attention by staging a rare protest outside the Ministry of Culture… Read more »
China launches ‘gray-zone’ warfare to subdue Taiwan: CCP ‘reaping the whirlwind’ from too-sharp power
Months after eliminating a popular challenge to its rule in Hong Kong, China is turning to an even higher-stakes target: self-governing Taiwan. The island has been bracing for conflict with… Read more »
Global public ‘not buying’ China’s sharp power propaganda
Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to be further consolidating his control of the ruling Communist Party, but Beijing’s overseas influence operations are looking a little ragged. The Central Committee’s just-concluded… Read more »
Cuba: State violence on the rise as dissident legacy challenges regime
As Cuban democrats mark the ninth anniversary of the death of Ladies in White leader Laura Pollán, state violence is on the rise, according to the Armed Conflict Location &… Read more »
EU sanctions Russia for Navalny poisoning, Belarus leader for crackdown
The European Union agreed Monday to impose targeted sanctions against Russian officials and entities allegedly involved in the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny but officials insisted the move should… Read more »
‘Gigantic Empire vs Tiny Poet’ – China’s Solzhenitsyn
In the middle of the night on May 30, 2020, more than fifty armed police surrounded an ordinary residential building in Chuxiong City, Yunnan Province and arrested Wang Zang, an… Read more »
Yuri Orlov ‘lit a fire under Soviet regime’
Yuri Orlov, physicist who became a symbol of Soviet dissent, dies at 96 https://t.co/21j9gD1Mdr — Democracy Digest (@demdigest) October 1, 2020 Yuri Orlov, a Russian-born physicist who designed particle accelerators,… Read more »
Reversal of Fortune: Turkey’s Unraveling Democracy
There is a concrete way for dethroned incumbents to evade the consequences of electoral defeat, observes Jan-Werner Müller, Professor of Politics at Princeton University. Consider the party of Turkish President… Read more »
Cuba’s liquidity crisis: Will Covid force reform or further repression?
The #Castro regime has aged badly. Cuba’s rum was legendary, before the regime stole it to finance their repression. Now every bottle sold keeps Cuba’s dictatorship in power longer…. Read more »