The Management of Dissent: How to Destroy an Activist | New Eastern Outlook
The Management of Dissent: How to Destroy an Activist
While
the West, and the United States in particular, has repeatedly voiced
criticism over human rights abuses in other countries, the US’s own
record in terms of detaining and incarcerating dissidents is now
becoming conspicuous.
In presenting a recent report on human rights issues, US Secretary of State John Kerry stated: “Here
is the truth, we believe: A government that fails to respect human
rights, no matter how lofty its pretentions, has very little to boast
about, to teach, and very little indeed in the way of reaching its full potential.”
This report itself is heavily weighted
in terms of naming Asian and Middle Eastern countries as human rights
abusers. Kerry reports that “In every part of the world, we see an
accelerating trend by both state and non-state actors to close the space
for civil society, to stifle media and Internet freedom, to marginalize
opposition voices, and in the most extreme cases, to kill people or
drive them from their homes.”
The United States is not named in the report.
However, the US is itself a major
culpable actor in such abuses. Despite its continuing and increasingly
strained efforts to self-promote as a defender of human rights, the US
is now inhibiting media and internet freedom as well as regularly
imprisoning activists–often without trial.
What the world may not be aware of is
that non-CIA connected individuals, who are merely attempting to correct
and/ or broadcast injustices, are now facing jail time.
