1. Kim Jong Il, North Korea (in power since 1994)
The
amount of debate over the recent nuclear weapons development in North
Korea has managed to deflect people from the fact that Kim’s government
represses its people more completely than any other living dictator.
North Korea has, for the last 31 years, been at the bottom of the
Freedom House ranking for political rights and civil liberties. It is
also ranks last in the Reporters without Borders ranking of press
freedom. The US committee for Human Rights estimates that there are
approximately 150,000 Koreans performing forced labour in prison camps
for political dissenters and their families.
Contrary
to popular belief, Kim Jong Il is actually a very clever and efficient
manipulator of his people. He is also the author of the books On the Art
of the Cinema, and On the Art of Opera.
2. Than Shwe, Burma (in power since 1992)
General
Than Shwe has survived a power struggle to emerge as the sole leader of
Burma’s military dictatorship. Because of his hard-line views, he has
taken an already bad human rights situation to an even worse level.
Burma has more child soldiers than any country in the world and the
Burmese regime continues to kidnap citizens to force them to serve as
porters for the military in conflicts against non-Burmese ethnic groups.
In
1990 the party of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi won 80% of
the vote in an open election. The military cancelled the results. Suu
Kyi has spent most of the years since then under house arrest. On May
31, 2003 hired thugs attacked Suu Kyi’s motorcade, killing several of
her supporters and arresting dozens of others including Suu Kyi herself.
Shwe
is a very private figure, preferring to work behind the scenes.
Consequently, even the Burmese people know very little about him.
Trained
as a hydrolic engineer, Hu Jintao joined the Communist Party in 1964
and spent the next 38 years working his way up the hierarchy. While
serving as Party Secretary of Tibet, he did not hesitate to administer
martial law and to oversee the killing of unarmed demonstrators. Now
that he is General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Hu,
although not all-powerful, is the leader of an unusually repressive
regime. The communist party still controls all media, and uses 40,000
internet security agents to monitor online use. More than 200,000
Chinese are serving re-education sentences in labour camps and China
performs more than 4,000 executions every year, more than all of the
other nations of the world combined, and many of them are for
non-violent crimes.
Mugabe
began his reign with widespread international and national support.
After leading a successful anti-colonial war of liberation, he was
elected independent Zimbabwe’s first president. But over the years he
has displayed increasingly dictatorial tendencies. According to Amnesty
International, in 2002 alone, Mugabe’s government killed or tortured
70,000 people. Unemployment is above 70% and inflation 500%.
Mugabe
has been accused of blocking the delivery of food aid to groups and
areas that support the main opposition party. He has continued to hold
elections, but has restricted the opposition’s ability to campaign and
has shut down media that do not support him. When opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai won 42% of the vote, Mugabe had him arrested and
charged with treason. Mugabe has also confiscated farms owned by white
people and turned them over to his supporters.
Crown
Prince Abdullah has been the acting leader of Saudi Arabia since his
half-brother, King Fahd, suffered a stroke in 1995. Saudi Arabia is one
of the only nations that holds no elections whatsoever. The royal family
has promised municipal elections soon but has not announced whether
women will be allowed to vote. In fact, it is forbidden for unrelated
Saudis of the opposite sex to appear in public together, even inside a
taxi. Women are not allowed to testify on their own behalf in divorce
proceedings and, in all court cases, the testimony of a man is equal to
that of two women.
According
to the US State Department, Saudi Arabia continues to engage in
arbitrary arrest and torture. During a human rights conference in 1995,
Saudi authorities arrested non-violent protesters who were calling for
freedom of expression. Some were later flogged, the usual punishment for
alleged political and religious offenses.
In
a very unusual show of power, the religious forbade children from
playing with Barbie dolls, which they dubbed ‘Jewish dolls’ that are
‘symbols of decadence of the perverted West’.
6. Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Equatorial Guinea (in power since 1979)
This
small West African nation (population 500,000) was a forgotten
dictatorship until major reserves of oil were found in 1995. Since then,
US oil companies have poured billions of dollars into the country.
Although the per capital annual income is $4,472, 60% of Equatoguineans
live on less than $1 a day. The bulk of the oil income goes directly to
President Obiang, who has declared that there is no poverty in Guinea,
rather that the people are used to living in a different way. In July,
state radio announced that Obiang is “in permanent contact with the
Almighty,” and that “He can decide to kill without anyone calling him to
account and without going to Hell.”
There
is no public transport, no newspapers, and only 1% of government
spending goes to health care. When asked why so much of his nation’s oil
money is deposited into his personal account at the Riggs Bank in
Washington, DC, Obiang explained that he keeps total control of the
money in order to ‘avoid corruption’.
7. Omar Al-Bashir, Sudan (in power since 1989)
Sudan,
the largest country in Africa, is in the midst of a complex 20 year
civil war that has claimed the lives of 2 million and uprooted another 4
million. Al-Bashir seized power in a military coup and immediately
suspended the constitution, abolished the legislature, and banned
political parties and unions. He has tried to negotiate a peace
agreement with the main rebel group, but he insists that the nation be
ruled according to Islamic Shari’a law, even in southern Sudan, where
the people are Christian and animist.
His
army has routinely bombed civilians and tortured and massacred
non-Arabs, particularly in the oil-producing areas in the south. He has a
long history of providing sanctuary for a wide range of terrorists,
only to turn against them. He turned over the notorious Carlos the
Jackal to France in exchange for financial and military aid and, in
1996, he tried unsuccessfully to sell Osama bin Laden to the US
government.
8. Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan (in power since 1990)
Since
taking charge of this former Soviet republic in central Asia, Niyazov
has developed the world’s most extreme personality cult, challenged only
by that of Kim Jong Il. Niyazov’s picture appears on all Turkmen money,
there are statues of him everywhere, and he renamed the month of
January after himself. His book, Book of the Soul, is required reading
in all schools at all levels, and all government employees must memorize
sections of it in order to keep their jobs.
Niyazov
rules without opposition. As he put it, ‘There are no opposition
parties, so how can we grant them freedom?’. In recent years Niyazov has
cracked down on religious and ethnic minorities, including Russians,
and has refused to grant exit visas for families for women under the age
of 35. He has imprisoned political dissidents and subjected them to
Stalinist-style show trials and public confessions.
The
Turkmen constitution requires retirement at the age of 70, but Niyazov
has ensured his own rule by creating a 2,507-member People’s Council
which unanimously elected him Lifetime Chairman.
9. Fidel Castro, Cuba (in power since 1959)
The
longest reigning dictator, Castro took advantage of the world’s
preoccupation with the Iraq war in March and April of 2003 to carry out
his biggest round-up of non-violent dissidents in more than a decade. He
arrested 75 human rights activists, journalists, and academics, and
sent them to jail for an average of 19 years.
Cuba
remains a one party state with all of the power in the hands of Castro.
The courts are controlled by the executive branch (in other words,
Castro). He traditionally blames all of his country’s problems on the
USA.
10. King Mswati III, Swaziland (in power since 1986)
Swaziland
(population 1.2 million) is the last remaining absolute monarchy in
Africa. Mswati III ascended to the throne when he turned 18, four years
after the death of his father. Because he had been educated in England
it was thought that he would modernize his kingdom. However, he has
shown a liking for certain Swazi traditions. On September 15, 2002, he
watched thousands of girls and young women dance bare-breasted in the
annual Reed Dance and then chose one of be his tenth wife (his father
had 100 wives). The girl’s mother filed a lawsuit against the king,
charging him with abducting her daughter. Mswati, who rules by decree,
then announced that the Swazi courts were forbidden from issuing rulings
that limited the king’s power.
In
an attempt to appease international opinion, Mswati approved the
drafting of a new constitution to replace the one that his father had
suspended 30 years earlier. However the new constitution bans political
parties, allows the death penalty for any criminal offense, and provides
for the reintroduction of debtors’ prisons.
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