A provocative short film about a woman and her dog, Bestia highlights the impunity enjoyed by Chile’s military and politicians
Everyday Russians, like these people in Moscow, may shoulder much of the burden of the world’s economic sanctions aimed at Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs.
AFP via Getty Images
Personalist dictators tend to shield the elites who support them from the economic pain of sanctions by pushing costs onto regular people.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, left, shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 18, 2022.
Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images
Belarus’ alliance with Russia is a strategic factor in the Ukraine war. The country’s long-term dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, has indicated he will do as Russian President Vladimir Putin says.
A soldier stands guard in front of the Brazilian national flag on Army Day in Sao Paulo, 18 April 2019.
Miguel Schincariol/AFP
Sharia is often portrayed as being brutal and barbaric. However, in many parts of the world, women are using Sharia to stop oppressive practices.
Protest signs on the ground before a march on March 28, 2021, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to denounce President Jovenel Moïse’s efforts to stay in office past his term.
Valerie Baeriswyl/AFP via Getty Images
Haitian president Jovenel Moïse is accused of overstaying his term, embezzling funds and dismantling parliament. Protests are a hallmark of his presidency – but the language of them has changed.
Victims of forced sterilizations protest in Lima, Peru, in 2014. Public hearings to uncover this dark chapter of the Fujimori dictatorship began in January.
Erneseto Benavides/AFP via Getty Images
Forced sterilization of Indigenous women was a covert part of ‘family planning’ under Fujimori. Over 200,000 Peruvians underwent tubal ligations between 1996 and 2001 – many without their consent.
Foreign military students from the U.S. Navy’s Patrol Craft Officer course conduct a field training exercise at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi in 2009.
Department of Defense
The US Armed Forces run 14 programs in over 150 countries, providing education and training for roughly 70,000 foreign military personnel each year. What, if anything, are they learning?
Deploying riot police to suppress peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators in Belarus turned more people against the country’s autocratic leader.
AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File
Pres. Lukashenka of Belarus has stayed in power for 26 years by being a master tactician. But he has seriously mishandled opposition protests, says a Belarus-born scholar of Eastern European politics.
Jeffrey Fields, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Critics say Trump’s defense of Saudi Arabia in the Khashoggi affair betrays American values. But many presidents have cozied up to dictators, ignoring human rights abuses to serve US interests.
Mexican soldiers killed up to 300 student protesters and arrested 1,000 more on Oct. 3, 1968, in an event that’s come to be known as the Tlatelolco massacre.
AP Photo
Fifty years ago, soldiers gunned down hundreds of student protesters in a Mexico City plaza. It was neither the first nor the last time Mexico’s army would be deployed against its own citizens.
Violence and uncertainty has followed Zimbabwe’s first modern election without Robert Mugabe. That’s not surprising: After 38 years of dictatorship, it takes more than a vote to build democracy.
The wife of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro reacts to an explosion during a public event, which the regime says was a drone attempting to assassinate the president (Aug. 4, 2018).
Venezolana de Television via AP
How long can a rogue regime survive assassination attempts, sanctions, bankruptcy, humanitarian crisis and mass unrest? When it comes to Venezuela, President Maduro may cling to power for some time.
Nicaragua, which overthrew its last violent dictator in 1979, is the only Latin American country since Cuba to stage a successful revolution.
AP Photo/Alfredo Zuniga
History shows that Latin American presidents usually don’t last long after they use violence to repress mass protests. Is Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega the next to fall?
Fewer than 20 countries worldwide have recognized the re-election of Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s president.
Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Maduro’s landslide May 20 re-election marks the official death of democracy in Venezuela. Dozens of nations worldwide have declared the vote illegitimate, and the US imposed new sanctions.
Despite his 20 percent approval rate, President Nicolas Maduro is almost assured a win in Venezuela’s May 20 election. The opposition says the vote is a “farce.”
REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
The Venezuelan opposition is asking people not to vote in the country’s May 20 election, which they call a ‘farce.’ President Maduro regime has jailed or blacklisted most of his competitors.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on March 1, 2014. Is he headed for another election victory?
Flickr
Turkey’s June 24 elections are the first in 16 years that could be politically meaningful. Opposition parties seem revitalised and could launch anti-Erdoğan coalition into the second round.
Associate Professor of Instruction in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies, Affiliate Professor at the Institute for Russian, European, and Eurasian Studies, University of South Florida
Frank and Bethine Church Chair of Public Affairs & Associate Professor, School of Public Service; Nonresident Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Boise State University