Word: authoritarian
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...swapped colonial control of nations in exchange for arrangements conducive to French political and business interests. For decades, Françafrique produced corrupt and brutal yet stable African partners for France and helped Paris fend off the rival influences of Britain, the U.S. and more recently China. Typically, the authoritarian African leaders who gained from this relationship grew magnificently rich as their people, inversely, became impoverished. And no ruler was more iconic of the so-called Big Men that Françafrique produced than Omar Bongo. (Read "Gabon Faces Bongo's Disastrous Legacy...
...Blending In Even in authoritarian and deeply religious countries, gay people are finding ways to gather and meet each other, the first step in mobilizing for their rights. In Pakistan, where homosexuality is considered a crime by both the state and Islam, an underground social scene thrives among the élite, particularly in Karachi and Lahore. Inspired by activism in India, two women in Lahore earlier this year founded Pakistan's first gay-rights organization, whose members meet privately in affluent homes. China's authorities decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, but it is only in the last few years that...
...Egyptian Trade Union Federation. But legal restraints have not stopped workers from laying down their tools; analysts attribute the phenomenon to the declining living standards that have accompanied the government's market-oriented economic policies, combined with the absence of democratic channels of recourse in President Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian regime. By some estimates, Egypt has seen at least 250 strike actions this year alone, organized locally and often featuring women workers playing a leading role. "Everything in the country is expensive, and most workers work two jobs, and still, it's not enough," says Wael Habib, a Mahalla strike...
...Within a few years of People Power in the Philippines, it was hard to keep up with all the peaceful uprisings that were sweeping aside authoritarian regimes across the globe: Solidarity in Poland, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, the end of dictatorships in South Korea, Mongolia and Taiwan. Even the extinguished idealism of student protesters in Tiananmen or the monks in Burma drew succor from the example of a certain Filipino homemaker's bravery - a woman who herself almost inadvertently assumed the mantle of Mohandas Gandhi after the assassination of her political-dissident husband...
...tarmac at Manila's international airport. On that day, opposition politician Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino Jr., 50, returning from three years of self-imposed exile in the U.S., was shot as he stepped off a jetliner into a crowd of soldiers and well-wishers. Though Ferdinand Marcos, the country's authoritarian President, tried to blame communist agitators, one Filipino civilian and 25 members of the military, including General Fabian Ver, the armed-forces chief of staff and Marcos stalwart, were indicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. The defendants were acquitted in December 1985 after a yearlong trial, but few Filipinos...