Oppression

Archbishop Boutros Marayati of Syria’s second city, Aleppo, told his congregation last week the city’s Islamist conquerors provided “assurances” Christians and other religious minorities could “continue living normally.”

Author Ta-Nehisi Coates openly wondered if he would be “strong enough” to resist the kind of violence exhibited by the terrorist organization Hamas in Israel on October 7 were he to grow up as a Palestinian living in Gaza.

The Venezuelan Public Prosecutor’s Office — loyal to socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro — issued an arrest warrant on Monday for opposition leader Edmundo González, accusing him of alleged conspiracy and other crimes as Maduro continues its brutal crackdown on dissidents following the July 28 sham presidential election, which the dictator fraudulently insists he “won.”

Russian police cracked down on dissidents who spent Tuesday honoring the memory of Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who died under murky circumstances in a Siberian prison in February.

The legislature of Georgia approved a controversial “foreign agent” law despite massive protests in the streets and fistfights in parliament.

Chinese security forces are cracking down hard on Tibetans protesting against a massive hydroelectric dam project that will destroy several villages and Buddhist monasteries.

Hundreds of mourners gathered at monuments in cities across Russia on Friday to pay their respects to Alexei Navalny.

Images of unveiled Iranian women protesting against the Islamic regime of Iran following the death of young woman in police custody risk producing “misogynistic assumptions that the veil is a universal marker for oppression,” warned a recent Washington Post essay, which also argued such depictions risk “legitimizing foreign intervention, from increased sanctions to warfare.”

2021 was the year Communist China smashed the dream of freedom and democracy in Hong Kong, with only modest opposition from the civilized world.

Chinese scientists have developed an artificial intelligence (A.I.) system that can examine “evidence” and charge people with “crimes,” as defined by China’s totalitarian parody of a Western justice system.

The coronavirus pandemic has been an indisputable boon for authoritarianism. Individual liberty and personal sovereignty are in retreat around the world. Tyrannical China is rising as the dominant world power, having paid no price for unleashing the disease, while the United States and its allies are having deep second thoughts about economic freedom, free speech, and other bulwarks against authoritarian control.

Chinese state media on Sunday trumpeted the “landslide victory” of pro-Beijing “patriotic” candidates in Hong Kong, while governments across the free world expressed grave concerns about a sham election in which pro-democracy candidates were legally persecuted and prevented from running.

Whistleblower Emma Reilly said on Tuesday the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) terminated her employment less than 24 hours after giving an interview to France’s Le Monde in which she revealed U.N. employees provided the brutal Chinese government with the names of Uyghur dissidents who planned to testify against Beijing’s human rights abuses.

More than 5,000 teachers have signed a Zinn Education Project pledge, vowing to defy laws banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory.

A report from Freedom House called Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach: The Global Scale and Scope of Transnational Repression describes growing efforts by authoritarian nations like China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran to silence critics and dissidents living overseas, sometimes by murdering them.

Hong Kong youth activist Joshua Wong said on Monday he has been subjected to “intensified” surveillance since he filed his candidacy for a seat in the Legislative Council.

A police siege of the Catholic Cathedral in Managua, Nicaragua, ended on Wednesday after a mob loyal to Communist dictator Daniel Ortega broke into the building and attacked opposition hunger strikers.

A report by Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Thursday said that Han Chinese men have been assigned to monitor the homes of Uyghur Muslim women while their husbands are held in Chinese re-education camps.

Seattle schools are putting into place a K-12 curriculum to teach about how Western culture has “appropriated” math and used it to oppress minorities.

The California Education Department’s model Ethnic Studies Curriculum plans to teach children that capitalism is a “system of power” and “oppression” and equal to “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” and “racism.”

A group of Canadian education experts, is prepared to present research showing that dodgeball should be banned from schools because it is “oppressive” and “miseducative.”

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus on Thursday refuted propaganda from the Chinese Communist government and described the crushing of democracy protests in Tiananmen Square 30 years ago as a “full-on massacre” that the free world will neither forgive or forget.

The “Green New Deal” introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) last Thursday dwells on the plight of various oppressed groups, but somehow fails to mention lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) Americans.

The totalitarian communist regime in Cuba continues to carry out human rights abuses and atrocities against the opposition, including “electroshock torture” on political prisoners for daring to speak out against the regime, revealed Luís Zúñiga, an anti-Castro dissident who spent 19 years behind bars.

The Jewish holiday of Passover begins Monday evening, commemorating the Exodus from Egypt, and from slavery to freedom, thousands of years ago.

Jennifer Lopez plays six different oppressed women in the new music video for her feminist anthem “Ain’t Your Mama.”

In a presidential campaign that certainly hasn’t lacked for entertainment, Hillary Clinton might have delivered the best knee-slapper yet during Thursday’s Democrat debate.

Two Turkish opposition journalists are facing life in prison without the possibility of parole for a story that accused the government of supplying weapons to Islamist rebels in Syria.

January 25 will mark the fifth anniversary of the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and the Tahrir Square uprising that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power, only to be deposed themselves in turn.

The Kurds are a major factor in the uneasy politics of Turkey and Iraq, and they have been holding the front lines against ISIS in Syria. There are Kurds in Iran, too, and they are nervous about the end of sanctions against Tehran, fearing the mullahs will use their increased wealth and power to further oppress the Kurdish minority.

Indonesia is facing international backlash after it was revealed the government requires female military recruits to undergo virginity tests. It is the second time in the past 6 months human rights organizations put pressure on the country to drop these tests.

Iran’s “morality police” arrested nine Christians on Christmas Day, presumably for celebrating the seminal holiday, though authorities did not give reason for the arrest. Heavily armed agents transferred the nine people to an unnamed location.