Xi Jinping has excelled with his tyrant credentials this year. Earlier this year, a controversial United Nations‘ report said that “serious human rights violations” have been committed in Xinjiang while Xi’s government is behind moves to repress...
Vladmir Vladimirovich Putin is the tyrant’s tyrant in more ways than one. Over the two decades he has dominated Russian politics as president and prime minister, he has set a new standard in the brutal oppression of opponents at home and abroad....
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo may not be an obvious choice for our 2022 ‘Tyrant of the Year’, but he certainly wins awards for many aspects of his dictatorial reign. Gaining power before three of his fellow inductees on this list were even born,...
The atrocious worker conditions and contempt for basic human rights in Qatar have certainly been on our minds over the last year. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the man pulling the strings. “Al Thani holds a relatively lower...
“Mohammed bin Salman should be awarded the title of ‘tyrant of the year’ not only because of his track record of censorship and suppression, but also because of the potential for violent tyranny to come” says Emma Sandvik Ling, partnerships and...
“As a child Aung San Suu Kyi was a celebrated heroine in my family home and Myanmar, an authoritarian regime determined to squash democracy. For a few years there was hope, although not for the Rohinghya community (thanks to Min Aung Hlaing),...
“As far as freedoms go, there is no landscape so bleak as North Korea,” says Index assistant editor Katie Dancey-Downs. “Under Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian regime, citizens are fed propaganda in lieu of actual food. And as for elections? The ballot...
There is nothing more disappointing (or predictable) than a revolutionary hero turned tyrant. In the great tradition of Lenin and Castro, Ortega promised a new dawn as the leader of the rebel Sandinista National Liberation Front which opposed the...
"He who has nothing to hide, has nothing to fear". These were the words uttered by the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador in a February 2022 press conference held the day after Heber López Vásquez, founder and director of the digital...
“You can usually tell the quality of a tyrant’s credentials by the number of people he has thrown in jail on spurious grounds and Europe’s last dictator, Alyanksandr Lukashenka, is no exception,” says Index associate editor Mark Frary. Lukashenka...