Category: Dictatorships

‘Beyond the Veneer of Reform’: Ricardo Bofill, an icon of the Cuban resistance, R.I.P.

     

Pro-democracy activists are mourning the loss of a leading architect of Cuba’s civil society and human rights movement. “The seed of this civil society was planted on January 28, 1976,… Read more »

‘China is not an enemy’? Barefoot lawyer’s death puts focus on CCP regime

     

Ji Sizun received the news that he had won a prestigious human rights distinction, the Cao Shunli Memorial Award, in honour of the veteran Chinese activist who died in 2014… Read more »

China ‘normalizing and enabling’ global authoritarianism

     

Thirty years have passed, yet China’s Communist Party is only becoming more authoritarian and cruel, notes Xiao Qiang, the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of China Digital Times, a bilingual  website launched… Read more »

Morsi’s ‘mixed legacy’ puts Muslim Brotherhood back in focus

     

Mohamed Morsi did a poor job as Egypt’s president before being ousted in a bloody military coup by the country’s current dictator, Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. But the gross mistreatment Mr…. Read more »

How to stop China exporting AI-driven digital authoritarianism

     

A United States senator is pushing to ban countries including China from an influential US government accuracy test of facial recognition technology, potentially opening up a new front in the escalating tech war… Read more »

Democracy’s development, decay, or death knell?

     

Western populism is impossible to understand as a direct result of domestic problems. Rather, it is a reaction to the global redistribution of power that is still taking shape, argues… Read more »

China blinks: what Beijing’s Hong Kong retreat says about Taiwan’s future

     

Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers aren’t satisfied with leader Carrie Lam’s public apology for how the government handled a highly unpopular extradition bill. Legislator Claudia Mo said Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s apology… Read more »

How democracies can exploit dictatorships’ soft, kleptocratic underbelly

     

The spread of kleptocracy, or “rule by thieves,” has harmed the poorest and most vulnerable populations worldwide most of all. But it also destabilizes entire regions, creating new fertile recruiting… Read more »