dissident

It’s Presidents’ Day, and America’s 45th is having a real one. Donald Trump spent the morning of the Monday holiday railing against the nearly half-billion-dollar court judgment levied against him for fraud in New York state, and grotesquely comparing himself to the Russian political dissident Alexei Navalny, who died last week in an Russian arctic penal colony. Trump started shitposting not long after dawn on his Truth Social network. Stinging from his massive court defeat, Trump seemed determined to keep…

What was particularly astonishing to me was that after all these efforts, the fund still remains incredibly obscure. The total amount in the fund ($17.3 million) was only revealed eight years after it was established, in a 2016 investigation by Foreign Policy; it’s unclear how much of that is left; and it’s not even publicly known which or how many Chinese dissidents YHRF helped. For a fund that was set up for a bona fide humanitarian purpose, its operations certainly deserve more scrutiny. Of all the lawsuits that have…

In December 2022, former Twitter employee Ahmad Abouammo was found guilty of taking bribes from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in return for sensitive account information on dissidents using the website. Now, the sister of Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, who was allegedly kidnapped and tortured for operating a Twitter account critical of Saudi Arabia, has filed a lawsuit accusing Twitter of breaking the law for letting its employees reveal his identity.  Areej al-Sadhan filed the complaint on her and her brother's behalf…

An explosive new lawsuit alleges Twitter acted as a member of a “Saudi criminal enterprise” when a handful of its former employees sent names and other data to the Saudi Arabian government revealing the identities of political dissidents. Saudi agents allegedly used that data to kidnap and torture at least one dissident and to enlarge the kingdom’s international surveillance network. Defendants in the case say security failures at Twitter let the paid informants to obtain company secrets, endangering dissidents’ lives.…

Iran has released award-winning film-maker Mohammad Rasoulof more than six months after arresting him for criticising the government, a pro-reform newspaper reported on Monday.Rasoulof, whose 2020 film There Is No Evil won the top prize at the Berlin international film festival, is one of several prominent artists, athletes and other celebrities detained in recent months.He was arrested last July for criticising the government’s crackdown on protests in the southwestern city of Abadan over a deadly building collapse. Two…

Pop counter-culture comes in many guises. In the case of Istanbul singer Gaye Su Akyol it sometimes seems enough that she exists, a glittering, poetic presence amid the repressive atmosphere of today’s Turkey. Now 37, she brings with her an elegant, sonorous voice and a highly eclectic mix of Turkish folk and western rock amid which are sprinkled popular anthems of dissidence – the celebrated Write Journalist Write by the persecuted singer Selda Bağcan is a case in point.Her own songs are more oblique and personal. Those…