dissidents

The Iranian opposition group known as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran/Mojahedin-e-Khalq (PMOI/MEK) claimed on Tuesday that the death toll from the nationwide uprising against the Iranian regime has surpassed 3,000, with casualties reported from 195 cities. President Donald Trump urged the “patriots” of Iran to stay strong, and promised “help is on its way.”

As anti-government protests in Iran enter a third consecutive day, journalists, activists, and commentators are questioning why the pro-Gaza protest movement that dominated Western streets and campuses has remained largely silent as Iranians confront an Islamist dictatorship at home.

Belarus has freed dissident Siarhei Tsikhanouski following a rare visit by U.S. President Donald Trump´s envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Tuesday that China has jailed Gu Wanming, a former bureau chief for the state-run Xinhua news service who dared to question the official account of Premier Li Keqiang’s death in 2023.

A dissident Chinese student at Georgetown says his family back in China has been terrorized by state security police.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is investigating if Chinese government pressure led to the suicide of dissident Wei Hu.

The communist Ortega regime in Nicaragua began a new wave of property seizures against political dissidents over the weekend.

Police recovered suspected pipe bombs just hours before U.S. President Joe Biden landed in the United Kingdom nation on Tuesday night.

Iranian celebrity chef Navab Ebrahimi was arrested without explanation in Tehran on Wednesday and carted off to its notorious Evin Prison, one of the world’s most hideous dungeons.

In the course of attempting to spin the alarming discovery of Chinese police stations in foreign countries as merely “service centers” for Chinese living abroad, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Wednesday admitted the Communist tyranny used the coronavirus pandemic it unleashed as an opportunity to greatly expand its operations in other countries.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on Friday that the 2022 Peace Prize will be awarded to Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski and two organizations, Memorial of Russia and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine.

A report by Europol examining terrorism within the EU in 2021 has found that jihadists remain the single biggest threat to the bloc, despite an increasing political focus on right-wing extremists.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday announced charges against a ring of Chinese agents for monitoring and intimidating Chinese dissidents living in the United States.

Chinese dissidents living in other countries are receiving threatening video phone calls from the mainland police, sometimes with their family members in China visibly held hostage in the background.

A 45-year-old woman named Zeng who lives in central China near Wuhan, center of the coronavirus pandemic, has been charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) all-purpose charge for silencing dissidents – after organizing two rallies against poor coronavirus management and overpriced food. She could face up to ten years in prison.

Human-rights watchdog Bitter Winter on Saturday criticized the government of China for its long-standing, but increasingly abusive, practice of classifying human rights activists, religious believers, and other dissidents as “mentally ill” and holding them in psychiatric hospitals where they are kept docile with drugs.

An anonymous Chinese woman courageously posted a video message to her fellow citizens on Sunday in which she called for resistance to the Communist Party, accusing it of destroying countless lives by bungling its response to the Wuhan coronavirus and warning that even now, the Party is primarily interested in suppressing dissent and maintaining power than fighting the disease.

Chinese democracy activists are demanding the release of Lai Rifu, a dissident living in Guangzhou who was snatched off the street on Monday in a bizarre arrest and incarcerated for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” by posting a video that used the unofficial anthem of the Hong Kong protest movement, “Glory to Hong Kong.”

Can western liberal democracies have dissidents? Increasingly, it seems to be the case.

Gorki Águila, the leader of Cuban anti-communist punk rock group Porno para Ricardo and one of the most outspoken anti-Castro voices on the island, was arrested Tuesday and forced to sit in a hot closed car under the sun as penance following the release of a new political program.

The U.S. embassy in Cuba, operating only on essential staff since the State Department confirmed more than two dozen diplomats and their families suffered health attacks of unknown origin there, hosted some of the country’s most prominent anti-communist dissidents for a Fourth of July celebration Thursday.

Authorities in Saudi Arabia are extending a crackdown on women’s rights activist, weeks before the country is set to lift a ban on female drivers.

Li Wenzu’s sixty-mile march to demand answers about the fate of her imprisoned husband Wang Quanzhang was cut short on Tuesday, as she was scooped up by plainclothes police and deposited back at her home under house arrest. Meanwhile, China once again postponed discussions to allow Liu Xia, wife of the late dissident and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, to emigrate to a free country. Liu Xia has effectively been under house arrest for eight years and counting.

An NGO that tracks violence against dissidents in Cuba published a monthly report this week finding that Cuban communist agents committed over 300 political arrests in March, most of short duration, resulting in the repeated arrests of dissidents considered particularly dangerous to the regime.

Cuban pro-democracy activist Guillermo Fariñas announced via Twitter on Wednesday that communist authorities told a fellow dissident that no individual known to oppose the Castro regime will be allowed to engage in “visa procedures” until the Summit of the Americas ends next month.

Wu Gan, a Chinese human rights activist who blogs under the pen name ‘Super Vulgar Butcher,’ was given an eight-year jail sentence for “subverting state power” on Tuesday.

A Cuban dissident group has published a report detailing 145 cases of human rights violations against black Cubans, sanctioned by the communist Castro regime, which proclaimed the end of racism in 1962.

A column in the Chinese state-run Global Times has denounced anti-communist dissidents as “losers” for condemning China’s treatment of Liu Xiaobo, its only Nobel Peace Prize winner, and warned that Liu’s death proves all defiance of the Communist Party “only end in failure.”

President Trump’s announcement of policy revisions toward Cuba — in which many strings on the Castro regime loosened by President Barack Obama were tightened again — was attended by a number of notable Cuban dissidents and victims of Castro violence.

The family of a Cuban man arrested on Monday for waving an American flag during the nation’s communist May Day celebration says his whereabouts are unknown. They fear the government has taken him as a prisoner of conscience for his repeated public displays of rejection of dictator Raúl Castro and communism generally.

One day, when I was nine years old, my father and I were on our way to Church. As we neared the entrance, I spat on the ground. Reflexively, my dad’s arm shot out across my chest like a railway barrier, blocking my motion forward.

Cuban police stormed into the home of Leticia Ramos Herrería, a member of the Ladies in White dissident group, and confiscated toys the group had collected to distribute in celebration of the Christian feast day of Epiphany.

Following the announcement that Fidel Castro, the 90-year-old former dictator of Cuba, had died, many are asking whether his demise will aid the Cuban dissident movement or whether his brother will continue to rule with an iron fist.

Fidel Castro, the dictator who used firing squads, labor camps, beatings, torture, and hunger to oppress his people for more than half a century, died Friday night at the age of 90. His demise – though his brother, Raúl, remains in power – has led many to ask what the future holds for Cuba’s anti-communist dissident community.

Barack Obama held “candid” talks with Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping during the G20 Summit, the White House said Saturday, talks which were said to have briefly touched on the topic of human rights. But that didn’t seem to help China’s many dissidents.

As the media celebrated the incoming windfall to the communist Castro regime with the first commercial cruise voyage from the United States to Havana in nearly 40 years, a Cuban man was arrested in the capital city for welcoming the ship with a U.S. flag.