9. CITIZENS ARE SUBJECT TO ARBITRARY ARRESTS AND DETENTIONS
Unfair trials leading to arbitrary arrests and detentions almost sum up the justice systems of dictator governed countries. A survey by a North Korean human rights organisation revealed that half of human rights abuses experienced by North Korean defectors under Kim Jong-Un involved arbitrary arrests and detention.
Imprisonment involved guilt by association sentences, a reference to prison terms that extend to the family members of the individuals charged with a crime. The North Korean authorities sentenced people, including foreign, to long term prison terms after unjust trials. A United State's (US) student, Frederick Otto Warmbier was convicted of 'subversion' after he admitted to stealing a propaganda poster.
He was sentenced to '15 years hard labor' on 16 March, 2016 and was denied communication and contact with the US embassy for at least six months. In early January 2016, Kim Dong Chul, a 62 year old US citizen born in South Korea, was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor on 3 April, 2016, on the charges of espionage but the authorities failed to provide details about the alleged spying activities.
And at one time, the United Nations reported up to 120 000 people under arbitrary detention in four known political prison camps.
8. ONE TV CHANNEL OR RADIO STATION STATE IS POSSIBLE
Despite the growth in technology, private broadcasters in some dictator led countries are restricted, citizens depend on government run and censored television and radio stations. In the Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea led by Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mbasongo, all broadcast media are state-owned and one time the country's radio described the dictator as 'the country's God'. RTV-Asonga is the only private radio and television network in the country, however it is owned by the president's son Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
In other top dictator countries, North Korea's television receivers in the country are locked to government specified frequencies, in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Television is the only television channel broadcasting on the local frequency, and President Isaus Afwerki's Eritrea is the only sub Saharan country without a single private media outlet.
7. MASSES LITERARY FEED ON GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA
Dictatorships have robust lie-based propaganda structures to blind masses from the status quo and to conceal their nature from the international community. Germany, during Adolf Hitler's rule from 1933 to 1945, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was a Nazi government agency responsible for enforcing the Nazi ideology. It controlled Germany's arts, music, theater, films, books, radio, education and press.
Productions during the era were aligned to reminding the Germans of the 'struggle' against foreign enemies and Jewish subversion. Film, 'The external Jew' portrayed Jews as wandering cultural parasites, consumed by 'sex and money'. 'The Triumph of Will' praised Hitler and the Nationalist movement. Newspapers, 'Der Sturmer' (The Attacker) published anti-Semitic cartoons to depict Jews.
Concentration camps officials compelled prisoners many of whom would die in the gas chambers to contact relatives by postcards and letters telling them that they were treated well and living in good conditions. In 1944, the Theresienstadt camp ghetto, in preparation for an international Red Cross team visit underwent a 'beautification' scheme. Before inspection, camp officials made a film casted by the residents (Jewish) as demonstration of benevolent treatment of the Jewish 'residents' of Thereinstadt, when the film was completed; the 'cast' was sent for killing at the Birkenau Killing Center.
6. POLITICS IS A VIOLENT FIELD
Political support for dictatorial leaders is mostly zealous and the supporters, at times no matter how poor, are ready to physically fight against any opposition sentiment. Yahya Jammeh who was president for 22 years in Gambia from 1996 to 2017 had a strong base for zealous supporters that even included juveniles.
Just after his ousting on 19 January, 2017, prior to the inauguration ceremony for the start of the new president Adama Barrow, on 18 February, the Gambian police detained more than 50 of Yahya Jammeh for harassing the followers of the new leader. Yahya Jammeh's supporters insulted and threw stones at the people returning from Barrow's inauguration ceremony and 26 of those arrested were juveniles.
And also, during his reign he had been known to rely on a close circle of fanatically violent supporters. 'The Junglers' were his 'death squad’; they helped him sow fear in Gambians. The United Nations in 2015 reported that the squad carried out arbitrary arrests, detention, torture, enforced disappearances and extra judicial killings.
5. TORTURES: FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS ARE QUITE MANDATORY
Torture is inevitably a necessity in order to access the truth in dictator country prisons. Notably torture was used in forcing confessions in Stalin's Russia during his reign between 1929 and 1953. In one of Stalin's detention centers, Sukhanovskaya prison or special facility 10, political prisoners were subjected to horrible tortures. A few of the 35, 000 people detained at the prison between 1939 and 1952, came out of the facility alive. Semyon Samuiloic who spent time in the facility said, "Our food for a day was two sugar lumps, a ration of heavy bread, and a bowl of undercooked pearl barley porridge". He also said he heard cries, sobs, women wailing, blows and interrogators shouting "Beat him in the balls".
Vseilod Meyernold, another prisoner at the facility, said he was beaten on the soles of his feet with a rubber strap. He confessed to working for British intelligence, and also incriminated his fellow director, Sergei Einstein, the writer, IIya Ehrenburg a composer, Dimitry Stankovich, including other figures of the arts world. He was later shot dead in the prison on 2 February, 1940. There were reportedly 52 methods of torture in the prison, including, beating prisoners on the most sensitive parts of their bodies, sleep deprivation for 10 to 20 days, during interrogation, prisoners were made to sit on a leg of an upturned stool, so that any slight mistake would send the leg into their rectum, and trussing up inmates with a long towel that was forced between their lips like horse's bridle and then pulled down- then tied under their feet, and forcing needles and pins into their fingernails, while fingers are being crushed on a door, or being forced to drink the interrogator's urine.
4. CORRUPTION IS ALMOST A MUST
The level of corruption is despicable in dictatorial countries. Much of the wealth amassed by leaders and their immediate followers comes through the system of corrupt governance through things like bribes, unlawful seizures, funds diversion etc. Ali Abdullah Saleh the dictator of Yemen from 1979 to 2012, according to a United Nations commissioned sanctions panel acquired an estimated amount of US$60 Billion through corruption.
The panel reported he had his asserts hidden in at least twenty countries with the help of his business associates and front companies. The funds used to generate Ali Abdali Saleh's wealth came from Yemen's gas and oil contracts he asked for money in exchange for granting companies exclusive rights to prospect for gas and oil. Also, his friends, family, and his associates stole money from the fuel subsidy program, which was up to 10% of Yemen's gross domestic product. The panel also received information from a confidential source that Ali Abdullah Saleh had a number of alternative identity passports provided to him by other states which enabled him to hide asserts under false identities.
His wealth would place him 5th in Forbes list of the richest people. And Yemen during his reign was one of the poorest countries in the world, ranked 154 out 187 on the United Nation's Development Index, with more than 54% of the population living below the poverty datum line.
3. LEADER TARGETED SANCTIONS END UP AFFECTING THE COMMON MAN
Throughout history international law enforcers have slapped dictators with economic sanctions in the hope that public discontent arising from the harm produced by sanctions will be channeled to the ruling elite, which is then pressured to conform to the sender's demands (Galtung, J. 1967:388).Thus the leader would be faced with the choice of either giving in to the sender or being unseated. Typically, sanctions cut off trade, and investments. However, widely the effect has been far from the expectation.
During Iraq's Saddam Hussein's reign from 1979 to 2003, the entire Iraq populace suffered from the United Nations imposed sanctions for seven years while the dictator remained in power. United Nations agencies and human rights organisations reported malnutrition due to absence of medicines and water purification systems, blocked shipments to Iraq of harmless but vital goods, ranging from medicines to sewage treatment facilities. On October 28, 1996, UNICEF leader then, Carroll Bellamy held a news conference about the crisis and she said that 4.500 children were dying every month due to hunger and disease conditions imposed by the sanctions. The World Food Program announced that 180.000 children under the age of 5 in Iraq were malnourished.
2. MOST LEADERS ARE ROOTED TO SOCIALISM, BUT ACTUALLY PRACTICE CAPITALISM
Works of Karl Max and Lenin in formulating the theory of socialism undeniably went a long way in influencing most political revolutions around the world. Socialism worked in overturning capitalistic imperialism. It was the founding principle of most freed countries lead by presidents who later became dictators. Surprisingly, rather than having public ownership of national wealth dominate the country’s economic sentiment, closer ties to the eastern bloc of the world that includes most of Asia and Russia became the only socialistic aspect of the governments.
AHosni Mubarak of Egypt who held on to power from 1981 to 2011, adopted the doctrine of Arab socialism carried on from Gamal Abdel Nassa. When the Egyptian crisis arose in the year 2011, on January 25, it emerged that the ruling party National Development Party (NDP), ran a business cartel and used it to monopolize the country's wealth and businesses. 40% of Egyptians were living under the International line, and basically most Egyptians were living on or under US$2 a day, in some cases 300 Egyptian pounds (US$51) per month. And on employment, joblessness was at its toll, each year 700, 000 academic graduates chased only 200, 000 new jobs. Hosni Mubarak himself had an assumed net worth net worth of US$40 - 70 billion.
1. THE LEADER'S NET WORTH IS USUALLY MASSIVE
Despite the poverty endured by most people living in dictator led countries, their leaders are usually filthy rich and at times have a net worth above the country's government budget by a very wide margin.
The Libyan dictator Moammer Ghadafi who ruled the country from 1969 to 2011 had a net worth of over US$200 billion and during his reign the Libyan government budget was always below US$50 billion.
According to the United Nations, 40% of the Libyan population of 6.4 million lived below the International poverty line and considerable cases in extreme poverty. Of all his wealth, little was invested in national infrastructure like schools and hospitals or any kind of economic diversification.
Quadaffi's wealth was kept in government institutions like the central Bank of Libya and the Libyan Investment Authority, and the leader was able to withdraw money at will. Some of his wealth was spent on buying political support from African and European leaders, in late 2006 and 2007 a French-Lebanese business man Ziad Takkieddine, as he told 'Mediapart' a French investigative site, for three times carried suitcases containing cash between €1.5 and €2 million for Nicholas Sarkozy's campaigns.
References
Link 1: mmpz_weekly_media_review_2011_7_110225.pdf
Link 2: https://books.google.co.zw/books?id=btd9BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA69&lpg=PA69&dq=villagers+are+forced+to+attend+mugabe+zanu+pf+rallies&source=bl&ots=YSunSI9_ny&sig=e9biWUqCqv0vA_DQzImP0W3x8xM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi9sq_pm4DTAhUHahoKHW16DlwQ6AEIFDAD
(Alternative: http://reliefweb.int/report/zimbabwe/zimbabwe-intimidation-countryside-escalates)
Link 3: https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/12/north-korea-rights-catastrophe-deepens
Link 4: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/04/18/North-Korean-defectors-report-50000-cases-of-rights-abuses/1341460991383/
Link5:https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/north-korea/report-korea-democratic-peoples-republic-of/
Link 6: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA1G0OF20140217
Link7:https://books.google.co zw/books?id=hZVhuV7h5hwC&pg=PA242&lpg=PA242&dq=Teodoro+obiang+nguema+mbasogo+television+and+radio+station&source=bl&ots=FffYoCyzml&sig=iqqyPve8zsnjsFqDxdxzkq1koPU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwipmrjhooDTAhXCPxoKHbT6D4IQ6AEIGDAE#v=onepage&q=Teodoro%20obiang%20nguema%20mbasogo%20television%20and%20radio%20station&f=false
Link 8: www.afrol.com/articles/19044
Link9:http://www.google.co.zw/url?q=http://students.depaul.edu/~lwagne11/E-Portfolio/Nazi%2520Film.doc&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwiM4vz-poDTAhUsBsAKHavyDzoQFggPMAI&sig2=xrNpBmG9UgJ3CSg3td2WLg&usg=AFQjCNEuIPXQudB4CFy4IjCq0H_C5620FA
Link 10: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/mobile/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005202
Link 11: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/mobile/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005202
Link12:http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/02/20/511375/Gambia-Adama-Barrow-Yahya-Jammeh-Foday-Conta-APRC
Link13:https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/03/lets-take-back-our-country/426852/
Link14:https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/09/17/gambia-two-decades-fear-and-repression
Link15:https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/ekaterina-loushnikova/comrade-stalin’s-secret-prison
Link16:https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/ekaterina-loushnikova/comrade-stalin’s-secret-prison
Link 17: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-31632502
Link 18: worldBankfigure.untribune.com/Yemen's_sales.
Link 19: galtung_67.pdf
Link 20: https://www.globalpolicy.org/global-taxes/41475.html
Link 21: https://www.unicef.org/media/media_pr_nutrition.html?p=printme
Link 22: K019866971.pdf
Link 23: http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/reign-of-egypts-mubarak-marked-by-poverty-corruption-despair/
Link 24: http://theweek.com/articles/487229/hosni-mubaraks-stolen-70-billion-fortune
Link 25: https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwindurgy/2011/10/25/did-moammar-gadhafi-die-the-richest-man-in-the-world/#7a49bf3b76cf
Link 26: Libya Full PDF Country Note.pdf
Link 27: http://m.thenational.ae/news/world/africa/poverty-persists-in-libya-despite-oil-riches
Link 28: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22220272
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