The early 21st century has seen a resurgence in dictatorships and authoritarian governments throughout the world, including regions like Europe previously thought to now be stable democracies. However, models like the Soviet-inspired communist state or “traditional” dictatorships are outdated and will not survive through the 21st century. Instead, a new form of authoritarian regime is…
Category: Human Rights
The European Union can now cut ‘hate-inducing’ live broadcasts and delete sections from their online archive. The Guardian, the 9-million reader newspaper that published Snowden’s revelations on global surveillance, published an article titled ‘is it ethical to punch a Nazi?’ Anti-Trump protesters in Berkeley turned a peaceful demonstration into a riot, burning things and smashing…
Vancouver, in western Canada, was the stage for a showdown between two opposing demonstrations – one against Maduro’s authoritarian rule in Venezuela and one supporting the country’s president. Though the demonstrations stayed peaceful, the two opposing sides did have shouting matches and the supporters of Maduro also brought along revolutionary music which they blasted from speakers….
“This is where they smashed my skull”, he says, making me feel the back of his head. You can clearly feel the injury. Then he shows me one of his arms, pointing out a long scar. The man sitting opposite of me is Abdul Hamid, who was ‘disappeared’ and tortured by the Syrian government for…
Title Image (c) SPIEGEL Online (www.spiegel.de) Article by Linus H. President Aleksandr Lukashenko seems more unsettled than usual by the annual 25th of March protests in Belarus, a country which he has led in an authoritarian manner for almost 30 years. The call for democracy is getting louder, and the authorities respond with harsh crackdowns. More…
Some people may know about China’s organ harvesting program, with up to 13,000 forced organ “donations” annually, may have heard about political opponents being murdered in Moscow or concentration camps in North Korea – but not only Russia, China and wacky central African regimes with the lifespan of a one day fly make people disappear….
By Linus Höller, 11.01.2017 It’s the evening of the 15th of July in the year 2016. While Recep Erdogan is on vacation in the Mediterranean town of Marmaris, chaos erupts in Istanbul and other major cities of Turkey. Parts of the military take to the streets, position themselves at strategically important positions, close off…
“Wer auf die Türkei verlässt, ist verlassen” – those who trust Turkey cannot be helped. Austria’s foreign minister Sebastian Kurz has held a clear anti-Erdogan stance in the past year, especially since the happenings following the attempted military Coup in the country earlier this year. The relations between Turkey and Austria significantly cooled, the tone between Vienna and…
The fall of the Berlin Wall following the mass demonstrations on November 9th, 1989 was one of the largest geopolitical events in recent history, which ultimately led to the reunification of Germany and the peaceful transition of power of the “communist” regimes in eastern Europe, which ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union…
The war against the self-proclaimed caliphate “Islamic State” has been dragging on for over two years and four months since it officially began on the 13th of June 2014. The war has and still is being fought out over two continents, in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Afghanistan and also Southeast Asia. A coalition of western…