Exile or Jail: The Grim Choice Facing Russian Opposition Leaders

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Experts say the current exodus of journalists and dissidents is the biggest wave of political emigration in the country’s post-Soviet history.

The Russian opposition activists Aleksei A. Navalny, Lyubov Sobol and Ivan Zhdanov taking part in a rally last year in Moscow. Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters
MOSCOW — Evoking the dark era of Soviet repression, Russian politicians and journalists are being driven into exile in growing numbers.

The steady stream of politically motivated emigration that had accompanied President Vladimir V. Putin’s two-decade rule turned into a torrent this year. Opposition figures, their aides, rights activists and even independent journalists are increasingly being given a simple choice: flee or face prison.

A top ally of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny left Russia this month, state media said, adding her to a list of dozens of dissidents and journalists believed to have departed this year. Taken together, experts say, it is the biggest wave of political emigration in Russia’s post-Soviet history.

This year’s forced departures recall a tactic honed by the K.G.B. during the last decades of the Soviet Union, when the secret police would tell some dissidents they could go either west or east — into exile or to a Siberian prison camp. Now, as then, the Kremlin appears to be betting that forcing high-profile critics out of the country is less of a headache than imprisoning them, and that Russians abroad are easy to paint as traitors in cahoots with the West.

“Their strategy is: First, squeeze them out,” said Dmitri G. Gudkov, a popular Moscow opposition politician who fled in June. “And if you can’t squeeze them out, throw them in jail.” » | Anton Troianovski* | Monday, August 30, 2021

* Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times. He was previously Moscow bureau chief of The Washington Post and spent nine years with The Wall Street Journal in Berlin and New York. @antontroian

Syria Uprising: Dissidents Seized from Their Homes
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Suspected dissidents were seized from their homes in Syria on Saturday as the country's Ba'athist regime deployed its feared secret police in an operation to spread renewed fear among opposition sympathisers.

here were reports of pre-dawn raids across the country, highlighting the risks faced by those who dared publicly to challenge Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president of 11 years, even when they were not braving live fire on the streets.

After days of using his aides to signal his willingness to make concessions, Mr Assad abruptly changed tack on Wednesday in a defiant television address in which he denounced protesters as conspirators in the pay of foreign powers.

The uncompromising new strategy appeared to yield dividends, with fewer taking to the streets on Friday than opposition activists had hoped.

But, showing that the challenge to Mr Assad was far from over, tens of thousands were still willing to defy him in demonstrations across the country despite widespread expectation of savage retaliation from the security forces.

Once again, as has happened so often in over a fortnight of unrest, they were met with violence and live fire by police and military units as well as unidentified loyalists in plain clothes who took up sniper positions on rooftops and balconies.

In a country that has effectively sealed itself off to the outside world, it is nearly impossible to establish an accurate death toll. But opposition activists told of as many as 27 deaths in four different towns and cities. » | Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent and Loveday Morris | Saturday, March 02, 2011

Iran Civil Rights Activist Could Face 'Honour Killing' If Deported from UK
THE GUARDIAN: Bita Gheadi fled from Iran to escape forced marriage / Fears of 'honour killing' from own family or state execution

Bita Ghaedi, an Iranian dissident, faces deportation on 5 May 2010, having fled to the UK in 2005 to escape forced marriage and the threat of sharia law. Photograph: The Guardian
An Iranian civil rights activist who is due to be deported from the UK tomorrow could face the death penalty and fears being murdered by her family in an "honour killing" if she is sent back to Iran, according to her British partner.

Bita Ghaedi, 34, fled Iran to the UK in 2005 to escape a forced marriage and in fear of her family discovering she had a secret lover. She has since spoken out against sharia law, forced marriage and human rights abuses in her homeland and has been filmed criticising the regime for TV channels widely available across the Middle East. She is currently in Yarl's Wood detention centre awaiting deportation, which is scheduled for 7pm tomorrow following the failure of a fresh asylum claim.

Her partner, Mohsen Zadshir, from Barnet, a member of the Iranian opposition who gained political asylum in 1999, said that if deported, her life is "finished".

Ghaedi has transgressed the strict traditional code under which Iranian women are supposed to adhere. Not only has she brought "shame" on her family by having a relationship with a man who was not her husband, but she has participated in the anti-government protests which have grown more vociferous after the disputed 2009 presidential election result. Each of these transgressions would be enough to put her life in danger if she is deported, according to Zadshir, a former Iranian politician who is now a British citizen. >>> Karen McVeigh | Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, third from right, leads actors in expressing support for Iran's opposition movement at the Venice film festival in September. Photograph: The Wall Street Journal
Iranian Crackdown Goes Global
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: NEW YORK -- His first impulse was to dismiss the ominous email as a prank, says a young Iranian-American named Koosha. It warned the 29-year-old engineering student that his relatives in Tehran would be harmed if he didn't stop criticizing Iran on Facebook.

Two days later, his mom called. Security agents had arrested his father in his home in Tehran and threatened him by saying his son could no longer safely return to Iran.

"When they arrested my father, I realized the email was no joke," said Koosha, who asked that his full name not be used.

Tehran's leadership faces its biggest crisis since it first came to power in 1979, as Iranians at home and abroad attack its legitimacy in the wake of June's allegedly rigged presidential vote. An opposition effort, the "Green Movement," is gaining a global following of regular Iranians who say they never previously considered themselves activists.

The regime has been cracking down hard at home. And now, a Wall Street Journal investigation shows, it is extending that crackdown to Iranians abroad as well.

In recent months, Iran has been conducting a campaign of harassing and intimidating members of its diaspora world-wide -- not just prominent dissidents -- who criticize the regime, according to former Iranian lawmakers and former members of Iran's elite security force, the Revolutionary Guard, with knowledge of the program.

Part of the effort involves tracking the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube activity of Iranians around the world, and identifying them at opposition protests abroad, these people say.

Interviews with roughly 90 ordinary Iranians abroad -- college students, housewives, doctors, lawyers, businesspeople -- in New York, London, Dubai, Sweden, Los Angeles and other places indicate that people who criticize Iran's regime online or in public demonstrations are facing threats intended to silence them. >>> Farnaz Fassihi | Friday, December 04, 2009

Iran Sentences Former Vice-president to Six Years as Trails of Dissidents Reach a Peak
THE TELEGRAPH: A former Iranian vice-president was sentenced to six years in prison as reprisals meted out to leaders of street protests against the disputed presidential elections claimed their highest profile victim.

Former Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi. Photo: The Telegraph
Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who was vice-president and a key aide to the leading reformist Mohammad Khatami from 1997-2005, was found guilty of conspiring against Iran's national security, state newsagencies reported yesterday.

He was arrested shortly after the presidential election in June as hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets of Tehran claiming the results, which gave an overwhelming victory to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were rigged.

State news agencies said he appeared before a court in Tehran on Saturday and was found guilty of charges including "gathering and plotting against the country's security", insulting the president, taking part in illegal demonstrations and issuing propaganda against the regime.

"Abtahi was sentenced to six years in prison for acting against national security and propaganda activity," a court spokesman said. >>> Richard Spencer in Dubai | Sunday, November 22, 2009

Why Is Britain Harbouring Bahrain's Dissidents?
THE TELEGRAPH – BLOG – Con Coughlin: I’ve just attended a seminar on Bahrain hosted by Field Marshall Lord Inge at the House of Lords where I was alarmed to learn that London has become a safe haven for a group of Islamic radicals who are trying to overthrow the Bahraini government.

I suppose, on one level, I should not be surprised by this revelation. After all “Londonistan” has long given sanctuary to Islamic militants of all persuasions – including several key al-Qaeda leaders.

But I am nonetheless surprised that, in the post-September 11 world we live in (not to mention July 7), the British authorities are still giving asylum to those who are trying to harm one of our key allies in the Gulf region.

Apart from being viscerally pro-British, the genial, Sandhurst-educated King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa is a key strategic ally in a region where the antics of Iran’s Islamic republic poses a major security challenge to the West. Bahrain provides the U.S. with a massive naval base, and would prove to be a vital asset to the West in the unfortunate event that a military conflict erupted over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme.

Bahrain has, I know, had its problems in the past, where relations between the Sunni ruling family, and its citizens, who are predominantly Shia Muslims, have, on occasion, been strained. Nor have these problems been helped by the unwelcome interference of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards which, on at least two occasions, have orchestrated plots to overthrow the royal family. >>> Con Coughlin | Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Iran Dissidents Risk Lives to Escape Regime
THE TELEGRAPH: When she saw the browbeaten features of her younger sister confessing at a show trial on state television, Sepideh Pouraghaie knew she had to flee Iran.

With her passport confiscated by the authorities for political reasons, the quick route out of the country - a flight from Tehran's gleaming new international airport - was impossible.

Instead, she was forced to gamble on a perilous mountain escape to the comparative safety of northern Iraq, escorted by Kurdish guerrillas on horseback.

The rocky byways of the Kurdish mountains that straddle Iran and Iraq have long been used by smugglers, bandits and separatists to evade the watchful eyes of state authority. But over the past four months, the smuggling gangs' regular trade in Afghan opium and bootleg alcohol has expanded to include a steady trickle of Iranian dissidents and journalists desperate to escape a brutal crackdown.

Accompanied by Kurdish tribesmen in traditional baggy trousers and bright floral cummerbunds, would-be escapees are led along secret pathways at the dead of night, negotiating terrain that is as hazardous as it is beautiful.

Sometimes they are forced to skirt the concrete machine gun emplacements of Iranian border guards, at others they have to wade across freezing mountain streams or negotiate sheer precipices. In perhaps the most ingenious smugglers' trick, one fleeing Iranian recently crawled across the border hidden in a flock of sheep, mimicking the manner in which the Greek mythical figure Odysseus escaped from the Cyclops' cave.

Those who have made the hazardous journey include opposition activists, human rights campaigners and reporters, who have been fleeing Iran in such numbers that the press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders has described it as the biggest exodus of journalists since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Hundreds more are believed to have lost their jobs - some for holding the wrong opinions, some because their newspapers were shut down by authorities. >>> Angus McDowall | Sunday, November 08, 2009

Hillary Clinton China Visit Blamed for the Detention of Activists
THE TELEGRAPH: Hillary Clinton has come under fire for her attitude to China's human rights record after it emerged that a dozen dissidents were placed under house arrest during her trip.

Photo of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the new American Secretary of State, courtesy of The Telegraph
Before travelling to the People's Republic on Friday for a two day visit, the new American Secretary of State, said she would not let the issue "interfere" with efforts to resolve the global economic crisis and combating climate change.

Human rights groups claimed her comments lifted the pressure on Beijing to address the issue, making it easier for the Chinese to justify fresh restrictions on dissidents.

"I am under house arrest because Hilary Clinton came," said Zeng Jinyan, the wife of China's most prominent activist Hu Jia, via an email message.

Mrs Zeng said she had been told by the police who monitor her that she and her baby daughter would not be allowed outside. Her husband is serving a three-and-half-year prison sentence.

Mrs Clinton's failure to press Beijing on human rights appears to contradict the desire of President Obama to restore America's reputation, after the Bush administration was criticised for flouting international law by torturing terrorist suspects and detaining them indefinitely.

Last month, President Obama was hailed for his decision to close the controversial Guantanemo Bay detention facility in Cuba, where some prisoners have been held without trial for more than seven years.

The Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a group comprising some of China's most determined activists, said the authorities had told dissidents that they would not be allowed to move freely during Mrs Clinton's visit.

They were either placed under increased surveillance or locked in their homes and barred from receiving visitors.

Some activists were reported to have been detained by police at guesthouses outside Beijing. >>> By David Eimer in Beijing | Saturday, February 21, 2009

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback (US) Barnes & Noble >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Hardcover (US) Barnes & Noble >>>