Posts Tagged ‘dissent’
September 17th, 2012
Yesterday Iran confirmed that its revolutionary guards corps (IRGC)
forces are present in Syria helping Bashar al-Assad’s government fight rebel forces. General Mohammad Ali Jafari, Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, issued a further warning that it would get involved militarily if its Arab ally came under attack. British officials say that the IRGC has provided riot control equipment and technical advice on how to crush
dissent, as well as providing support to improve monitor protestor’s use of the
internet and mobile phone networks.
June 7th, 2012
Chinese dissident Li Wangyang, who was jailed for over 22 years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, was
found dead in a hospital ward in Shaoyang city, Hunan province, on Wednesday. Family members found the dissident, 62, apparently hanged by a bandage around his neck in his hospital room. Security and hospital authorities have said he had committed suicide but his family has said Li died in strange circumstances. Police are also reported to have removed his body without the family’s permission.
February 14th, 2012
Veteran
Chinese dissident Zhu Yufu has been sentenced
to seven years in prison for ”inciting subversion of state power” after he shared his poem
“It’s time” over Skype. The court in Hangzhou, eastern China, sentenced Zhu following a trial hearing on 31 January. During the hearing, prosecutors cited the poem and messages the activist had sent online. In the poem, Yufu called on Chinese citizens to defend their freedoms. The court verdict said the crime deserved “severe” punishment.
January 20th, 2012
Dissident Wilmar Villar Mendoza, has
died in a hospital in eastern
Cuba following a 56-day hunger strike. Villar launched his strike shortly after his November arrest, after which he was put on trial and sentenced to four years in prison for crimes including disobedience, resistance and crimes against the state. Fellow opposition activists have claimed mistreatment by the Cuban government contributed to Villar’s death.
November 7th, 2011
A group of petitioners
attempting to visit blind Chinese activist
Chen Guangcheng were beaten on 30 October. According to petitioner Zhu Jindi, as the group of 37 supporters made their way to Dongshigu in Shandong province, where Chen remains under illegal house arrest, 100 people appeared and beat the group, confiscating their mobile phones and cameras. Li Yu, a democracy activist from Sichuan, was severely beaten and thrown into a police car with two other petitioners. Li is still missing, though the other two individuals were released on 2 November. Other activists
have reported similar incidents when attempting to visit Chen, who fell foul of authorities in 2005 for his work in exposing forced abortions in Shandong province.
September 15th, 2011
A dissident writer who spent five years in a
Chinese jail was released on Tuesday. Talking to
Associated Press, Yang Maodong said he had been wrongly imprisoned and subjected to ill-treatment “beyond people’s imagination.” Yang said the charges of alleged illegal business activities for which he was jailed were trumped up and that his jailers only questioned him about his pro-democracy activities, not business matters. Yang was arrested in September 2006 and sentenced in November 2007. His
prosecution is believed to relate to a publication entitled Shenyang Political Earthquake, which exposed government corruption in Shenyang, Liaoning province.
September 12th, 2011
Chinese rights activist Wang Lihong has been
sentenced to nine months in prison for “stirring up trouble”. Wang was charged after attending a demonstration last year at the trial of three other activists in Fuzhou, southern China, supporting three bloggers accused of defamation for helping a woman
who pressed officials to reinvestigate her daughter’s death. Wang was detained in March of this year, following the government’s
widespread crackdown on dissent.
August 21st, 2009
Ethiopia’s popular singer, Teddy Afro, was freed from prison last Thursday after serving 18 months of a two-year sentence because of good behaviour. Teddy, whose real name is Tewodros Kassahun, was found guilty of the killing of a homeless man in a hit-and-run incident in 2007 but denied driving the car. Opposition parties and supporters say Teddy had been jailed for his criticism to the government in some of his songs and hundreds protested outside the court during his trial. Read more here
