Freedom House report on global political prisoners and public confessions

Freedom House lraq’s seizure of Kuwait in 1990. China's claim of ownership of the South China Sea, along with its creeping militarization of previously uninhabited islets, is at least as ambitious as Russia's move, though the impact is perhaps less jolting given the dearth of occupied populations. There have been other reversions to 20th-centu- ry methods of repression. For example: Political prisoners: During the 20th century, opposition figures, political dissidents, advocates for minority groups, and people who wrote critical commentaries were regularly sentenced to prison terms, often under grim conditions, by dicta- torships of all stripes. Amnesty International's founding mission was the defense of what were called “prisoners of conscience,” and they ranged from dissidents and Jewish refuseniks in the So- viet Union to those who resisted right-wing juntas in Latin America. Soviet dissidents like Natan Sharansky and Vladimir Bukovsky were the focus of international campaigns organized by human rights organizations and cautiously embraced by the United States and other governments. The ranks of political prisoners declined sub- stantially after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of dictatorships in Latin America, Asia, and to acertain extent Africa. Indeed, it was a major objective of the new authoritarianism to maintain political control without shedding blood or putting people behind bars, actions that pro- voked condemnation by human rights advocates, democratic governments, and UN entities. Recently, however, the political prisoner has made a comeback. One notably egregious offender is Azerbaijan. Under President Ilham Aliyev, this country of just 9.4 million people has amassed one of the world's largest numbers of political prisoners per capita, with approximately 80 prisoners of conscience during 2015, accord- ing to verified figures. Azerbaijan's repression has grown despite the fact that Aliyev already enjoyed near-total control of key institutions and distinctly gentle treatment from U.S. and Euro- pean political leaders due to Azerbaijan's role as an alternative to Russian energy exports. Venezuela also has a substantial number of political prisoners—around 100 as of June 2016, according to credible sources, including promi- nent members of the political opposition.? Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, some estimates suggest that Egypt holds as many as 60,000 polit- ical prisoners.’ Turkish authorities have similarly rounded up tens of thousands of people in the wake of the July 2016 coup attempt. A much smaller country, Bahrain, has convicted hundreds of people of political crimes since 2011, when the monarchy began arresting members of the polit- ical opposition who were demanding democratic elections and other freedoms.’ China is in a class by itself. Since the 1989 crackdown on prodemocracy protests in Tian- anmen Square, the Communist Party leadership has regularly jailed political dissidents, espe- cially those who argued publicly for democratic political changes or made gestures toward the formation of opposition political parties. The most notable political prisoner is Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009. However, conditions have grown far worse under President Xi Jinping, as a numbing procession of lawyers, journalists, bloggers, women's advocates, minority rights campaigners, and religious believers have been detained, placed under house arrest, disap- peared, or sentenced to prison.> Public confessions: Humiliating public con- fessions of ideological crimes were a staple of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's purges and Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China. They were also employed by Eastern European sat- ellite regimes during the show trials of the late 1940s. A peculiarly communist technique, the public confession was largely abandoned after the deaths of Stalin and Mao. Under Xi, China has revived the practice. A grow- ing list of editors, human rights lawyers, and advo- cates of political reform have been coerced into making televised confessions of their “crimes.” The Chinese authorities even intimidated a Swed- ish citizen, legal reform activist Peter Dahlin, into confessing that he broke Chinese law and “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” Dahlin was accused of endangering state security by funding human rights lawyers and compiling reports on the state of human rights in China.® ntensified media domination: Most modern au- thoritarian countries allowed a sufficient degree www.freedomhouse.org 53 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019287