Putinism minus Putin?
Police detained nearly 1,400 activists (HT: AP/CFR) who participated in a Saturday protest against a ban on some opposition candidates from running for Moscow’s city council, according to a monitoring… 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 »
The disinformation age: a revolution in propaganda?
Forty years have passed since my father was pursued by the KGB for exercising a citizen’s simple right to read, to listen to what they chose and to say what… 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 »
Latin America: How to stop corruption and save democracy
In Venezuela and throughout the region, corruption will not be eliminated overnight. But to reduce it, several things must occur, Susan Segal, AS/COA’s president and CEO, writes for Americas Quarterly’s… Read more »
China’s Great Firewall typifies the dictator’s dilemma
Days after a group of 22 nations signed a letter addressed to the president of the UN Human Rights Council and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights calling on… Read more »
Hungary’s illiberal victimhood narrative stifling freedom, limiting dissent
A change in control at Budapest’s 1956 Institute, prompted by Hungary’s illiberal premier Viktor Orban, is part of a wider trend of stifling academic freedom and limiting public dissent, creating… 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 »
The ‘authoritarian dynamic’ behind the rise of populism
Trust in democratic institutions to resolve conflicts fairly is at odds with the populist notion of democracy as the expression of the unified will of the one true people. Populist… 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 »