Category: dissent

Cuba: battling economic crisis, escalating attacks on civil society

     

Communist-run Cuba has imposed sweeping price controls on all state and private businesses as it battles a deepening economic crisis and mounting U.S. sanctions, Reuters reports: Resolutions published in the… Read more »

Hong Kong protests: Prospect of Chinese army intervention rattles nerves

     

The idea of Chinese tanks rolling into Hong Kong would have been unthinkable only a few months ago. But as the Asian financial centre enters its third month of protests… 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 »

Existential threat? Iran and opposition ‘locked in lopsided confrontation’

     

At a time of rising tensions between the United States and Iran, various opposition factions within the Iran diaspora are competing to position themselves as a credible alternative to the… Read more »

‘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 »

Russia protests target a system ‘chemically incompatible with democracy’

     

Police in Moscow detained 39 protesters at a rally calling for opposition candidates to be allowed to run in September’s elections to the Russian capital’s parliament. Opposition leaders cried foul… 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 »

Russian media in rare show of solidarity with detained journalist

     

A Moscow court on Saturday ordered Meduza journalist Ivan Golunov to two months of house arrest, rejecting investigators and prosecutors’ requests to keep him in pre-trial detention. Golunov, who was… Read more »

Democratic solidarity can curb China’s export of repression, Senate told

     

Chinese artist Badiucao, whose anonymous political satire infuriated Beijing and earned him comparisons to Banksy, on Thursday announced a protest campaign against Twitter over what he says is its pandering… Read more »