dissidents

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.

“We are the opposition,” a man shouted live in Spanish on ESPN, interrupting a broadcast by reporter Bob Ley on the then-upcoming MLB-Cuba baseball game attended by President Barack Obama shortly thereafter.

Following a last minute meet and greet in Peoria, Arizona, 2016 Republican presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz told reporters that President Obama’s visit to the communist dictatorship of Cuba that day was “a sad day in American history” and that

Mere hours before President Obama landed in Cuba, more than 50 pro-democracy dissidents were beaten and arrested.

Secretary of State John Kerry told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee he plans to travel to Cuba in the “next week or two” to discuss human rights.

The Cuban dissident community has reacted with alarm and dismay at the news that President Obama will visit the island in March, calling the move “an error” that will likely bring pro-democracy activists “a lot of collateral damage.”

One year ago today, President Barack Obama announced a radical change in U.S. policy towards the rogue communist government of Cuba, insisting that funneling new money to the Castro regime would empower “democracy and human rights” n the island. Today, the failure of President Obama’s diplomacy is abundantly clear, as Cuba’s political detention rates skyrocket and thousands more risk their lives to reach the United States before the Castros are emboldened even more.

The Cuban government has re-arrested almost all of the 53 political prisoners released in January as part of its “normalization” with President Obama, according to Senator Marco Rubio. The news comes as Cuban police assault and detain dozens of dissidents in anticipation of International Human Rights Day, December 10.

Zaqueo Báez, the Cuban dissident arrested for approaching Pope Francis during his visit to the island and shouting the word “freedom,” was just freed from prison and is awaiting trial in the communist dictatorship for “public disorder” and “disrespect.”

First, we had FIFA officials busted on corruption charges. Now, Egypt is stepping up to do its part in the War on Soccer, with the alarmingly named Cairo Court for Urgent Matters designating hardcore “Ultras” fan clubs as terrorist organizations.

A Paris-based Iranian opposition group called the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) claims that teams of North Korean “nuclear experts, nuclear warhead experts and experts in various elements of ballistic missiles including guidance systems” have made several visits to Iran, most recently in April.

A group of Cuban dissidents invited to attend events at this weekend’s Summit of the Americas were insulted and physically assaulted by a swarm of dozens of communist Cuban officials and supporters in Panama on Wednesday.

The Summit of the Americas begins tomorrow, but the presence of dictatorships at the table with the rest of the Western Hemisphere’s democratic nations has already begun to cause havoc. On Wednesday, representatives of the socialist governments of Venezuela and Cuba walked out of the pre-Summit Forum on Civil Society due to the presence of pro-democracy activists.