Government Repression Quotes

I know some really outstanding Turkish journalists, and have been pleased and honored to be able to join with them a few times in their courageous protests against state terror and repression.

In Singapore, Malcolm X type of activity would be extremely difficult because the government can be very harsh on lawbreakers.

Let me start with Yahoo. As we meet today, a Chinese citizen who had the courage to speak his mind on the Internet is in prison because Yahoo chose to share his name and address with the Chinese Government.

The U. S. Government tends to be vindictive in these cases when it comes to people who have exposed their wrongdoing. U. S. political Officials who … violate the Constitution of the United States—they get promotions; the people who expose them, like Mr Snowden, get indictments.

In Uzbekistan, hundreds of protesters were recently killed under the corrupt regime of President Karimov in what human rights groups are calling a massacre.

The government believed that adherence to authority was human nature, so the Gezi protests were a real surprise to them. After the initial moment of shock, they decided to severely punish those participating in what they called an act of disobedience to authority.

I see Edward Snowden as someone who has chosen, at best, exile from the country he loves-with a serious risk of his assassination by agents of his government or life in prison (in solitary confinement)-to awaken us to the danger of our loss of democracy to a total-surveilla nce state

The government that has imprisoned more journalists than any other in the world was democratically elected.

The popularity of leaders like Mandela was an invitation to counter-attack by the government. Mandela was banned from speaking, from attending gatherings, from leaving Johannesburg, from belonging to any organization.

Even relatively tolerant countries fine and jail people for expressing heterodox views. America uniquely protects speech.

Under the leaden sway of Alexander III's government, the silence of the graveyard prevailed. Russian society, equally discouraged by the collapse of all hopes for peaceful reforms and by the apparent ineffectiveness of the revolutionary movement, was in the grip of a mood of depression and resignation.

…allies such as Bahrain are liable to use their American made weapons against their own people.

Who do you think is more difficult to face: oppressive governments, or oppressive societies?

There never has been a desire on the part of the government that the struggle of Black people in America should be linked to the struggle of our people in every part of the earth. Every leader that was international in scope and in reach became the target of the government - Paul Robeson, Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Kwame Ture and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Any Black leader who would try to connect us to our brothers and sisters in Africa and Asia were seen as a threat and became a target.

We have no political prisons. We have political internal exiles.

And there had to be a dagger thrust in the heart of the left to tell them that you are no longer gonna give five years for a Smith Act prosecution or one year for Contempt of Court, but we're gonna kill ya!

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.

The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 went after unnaturalized immigrants as well as opposition newspaper editors.

I would like to assure you that there is no organization or any sort of repression against people who don’t agree with our actions, for example in Ukraine, Crimea, or any other external issue, no one from official government organs do this.

Akbar Ganji was in prison for six years, and that was it...for six years, and it was finished. Of course the Iranian government could make up some stories and accuse him of some other things, but the international support didn't let the government do that.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

One can have great concern for the people of Ethiopia, but it's another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of England.

People often ask me why I continue to speak out if it's hurting my family. But that's exactly why I speak out. The people Erdogan is targeting are my family, my friends, my neighbors, my classmates. I need to speak out, or my country will suffer in silence.

Hundreds of poor laboring men and women are being thrown into jails and police stations because of their political beliefs. In fact, an attempt is being made to deport an entire political party.

The same thing will happen in China that happened in Chile. Political freedom will ultimately break out of its shackles. Tiananmen Square was only the first episode. It is headed for a series of Tiananmen Squares. It cannot continue to develop privately and at the same time maintain its authoritarian character politically. It is headed for a clash. Sooner or later, one or the other will give.