Blog Post Jul 31, 2024 Election Watch: Modi Secures Third Term Amid Electoral Irregularities India has recently concluded the world’s largest electoral exercise, with some 640 million voters casting their ballots over seven weeks beginning on April 19.
Blog Post Jul 22, 2024 Undermined: China’s Growing Presence in Tibetan Mining For decades, China has exploited ethnic minorities in the name of economic growth. To become a global leader in mass-producing and exporting inexpensive goods, it relies on a steady supply of cheap labor. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has found this labor supply in its occupied territories, such as the Uyghur Region.1
Blog Post Jul 21, 2023 The Road To Nowhere: Cambodia’s Bogus Election Cambodians are counting down to Sunday’s general election. Prime Minister Hun Sen, one of the world’s longest-serving dictators — 38 years and counting — is aiming to “win” yet another rigged election.
Blog Post Jun 26, 2024 Eight Ways Zimbabwe’s regime hijacked the 2023 vote Zimbabweans have never known free and fair elections. Voter intimidation and suppression have tainted every election since February 1980, during which Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party claimed power.
Blog Post May 10, 2024 Kyrgyzstan Under Japarov: The Country’s Decline Into Dictatorship For years, Kyrgyzstan was considered the only country that was moving toward democratization in Central Asia as its civil society has mobilized each time to resist the oppression of tyrants.
Blog Post May 9, 2024 Thailand Election: A New Beginning or Political Déjà Vu? Thailand’s general elections are set to be held on May 14. Up to 70 political parties, both big and small, are running candidates in these elections hoping to win seats in the parliament.
Blog Post May 3, 2024 Capital Punishment in Vladimir Putin’s Russia On Monday, an independent polling organization reported that more than 50% of ordinary Russian citizens support bringing back the death penalty, yet another sign of the public’s growing approval of the use of capital punishment over the last 10 years.
Blog Post Apr 22, 2024 Beyond Borders: China’s Attempts to Censor Global Academia The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is dedicated to perfecting its global narrative, employing a combination of coercion and co-optation tactics to shape public discourse both within China and abroad.
Blog Post Mar 27, 2024 Beyond Borders: China’s Grip on Global Media Controlling the public narrative is the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) modus operandi. It relies on narrative and revisionist storytelling to coerce its subjects into ideological adherence.
Blog Post Mar 12, 2024 Early Presidential Elections in Azerbaijan: Elections Without a Choice On Feb. 17, Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held a meeting on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
Blog Post Mar 11, 2024 Venezuela expelled the UN: Why it matters By the end of this year, three of Latin America’s worst authoritarian regimes will undergo mandatory reviews of their country’s human rights record.
Blog Post Mar 8, 2024 Election Watch: Pakistan’s Contentious Elections On Thursday, Feb. 8, Pakistan, a country of 250 million people — the fifth most populous globally — hit the polls for its 12th general election. It came amid growing political and economic instability and a security crisis.
Blog Post Feb 28, 2024 The Legacy of the EDSA People Power Revolution Philippines President “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has been busy lately cozying up to the West, much to the chagrin of his pro-Beijing predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte.
Blog Post Feb 9, 2024 A History of Sports and Dictators, Part 1: From Ramses II to Rome’s Bread & Circuses In the Olympic Games of 416, Athenian statesman and military general Alcibiades fielded seven teams in one of the most prestigious Olympic events, the four-horse chariot race known as the quadriga.
Blog Post Feb 1, 2024 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #9 This past week, Egyptians were told to put up with soaring inflation, while we saw Kazakhstan’s financial suppression of journalists and Pakistan’s continued rise in Bitcoin adoption.
Blog Post Feb 1, 2024 Burma’s Third Coup Anniversary Three years ago today, the Burmese military junta, led by Min Aung Hlaing, seized power from the democratically elected government in a coup.
Blog Post Jan 29, 2024 Bloody January Remembered In January 2022, citizens in the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan experienced the most violent event in their recent history.
Blog Post Jan 25, 2024 The Aliyev Regime’s Role in the Ethnic Cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians On Sept. 19, Stepanakert, the capital of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, came under a barrage of bombs and artillery fire. Azerbaijan announced the beginning of an “anti-terrorist campaign,” signifying Baku’s final attempt to push ethnic Armenians out of the enclave and reclaim control over its territory.
Blog Post Jan 19, 2024 Shadows of Support: Japan’s Ties with Burma’s Military Junta In February 2021, the Burmese military junta staged a coup against the democratically elected government of the National League for Democracy Party (NLD) and invalidated the results of the November 2020 general election.
Blog Post Jan 15, 2024 Beyond Borders: China’s Transnational Repression of Uyghurs In March, Turkish police raided a bookstore in Istanbul, accusing it of selling copies of Uyghur books banned by the Chinese regime without proper copyright.
