Category: Democracy Assistance and Promotion

China’s sharp power: Nationalists threaten violence, shape narrative overseas

     

    The Xinjiang region has been the site of a mass detention program where an estimated 1.5 million Uyghurs have been or are being held in a series of internment camps, China Digital Times* reports…. Read more »

Algeria’s civil society resilient in ‘epic standoff’ with military

     

The street has stared down the army, and the army has blinked. So the epic standoff in Algeria — Africa’s largest country, the oil-rich neighbor of Libya, strategically situated on… Read more »

Is Poland retreating from democracy?

     

In both Eastern and Western Europe, social-democratic parties have shifted to the center on economic policy, not only sapping the electoral strength of these parties, but also opening up political… Read more »

Top defectors reveal ‘systematic’ torture, kleptocracy and Cuban control in Venezuela

     

  Venezuelan Socialist Party Vice President Diosdado Cabello on Saturday predicted U.S. Marines will “likely” enter the South American country, speaking a week after a confrontation between aircraft belonging to… Read more »

Call to blacklist China’s human rights abusers as ‘trailblazing’ dissident jailed

     

Representatives from Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) have submitted to the U.S. State Department a list of the Chinese regime’s worst human rights abusers. The website Minghui.org, which has… Read more »

Protest to politics? Lessons & narratives from Lebanon’s 2018 elections

     

Last year, elements of civil society ran against the established traditional political parties in Lebanon’s parliamentary elections, drawing on the experience of the 2016 Beirut Madinati (“Beirut is my City”)… Read more »

Pakistan’s military targets feminist icon

     

Gulalai Ismail is one of Pakistan’s best-known women’s rights crusaders, speaking out about forced marriages, gang rapes and crushed dreams. Her groundbreaking work has carried her around the world, winning her… Read more »

Strategic Competition: Is China winning the ideological battle?

     

Beijing’s new national security White Paper flags the fact that America and China are now competing superpowers, and that China’s growing military forces are developing to the point where they… Read more »

Hong Kong protests have unnerved ruling Chinese Communist Party

     

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests have unnerved the ruling Chinese Communist Party as it prepares to hold its an annual political retreat and as President Xi Jinping pushing high-tech security measures,… Read more »

Ukraine: potential for change – or will vested interests divert reform?

     

Now that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s new party, Servant of the People, has won a majority in Ukraine’s parliament, the potential for real change exists. But it comes with the risk… Read more »