Hisham Matar Quotes

Singling out political opponents for working against the ruling party is precisely the tactic of every tyrannical government from Red China to Venezuela. The first step in the process is creating unfounded public suspicion of political opponents, followed by arresting and jailing any who continue speaking against the regime.

Intermediary liability enables the Chinese authorities to minimize the number of people they need to put in jail in order to stay in power and to maximize their control over what the Chinese people know and don't know.

Turkey jails more journalists than any other country in the world—more than China, more than Iran

The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.

I grew up in Taiwan, which was a military dictatorship.

There were no dissidents then in the USSR because they were all killed.

Every terrorist regime in the world uses isolation to break people's spirits.

Since Castro took power, the Cuban people have been denied basic human freedoms. No freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no political freedom. And the regime uses brutality and violence to suppress these freedoms and impose its will.

The post-totalitarian malady has taken its most acute form in Romania. And it has taken place for very specific reasons. The repression here has been more cruel, more brutal, than in other states caught in the inferno of a 'socialist paradise.'

As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. That is how it works in a democratic system and mass fear becomes the ticket to destroy rights across the board.

Madam, I have come from a country where people are hanged if they talk.

Growing up in Pakistan in the 1980s, I lived in the shadow of a tyrannical state.

Having spent the greater part of my life under a Communist dictatorship, I am very familiar with the Bolshevik mentality according to which an author in general, and an eminent author in particular, is always guilty, and must be punished accordingly.

The Democrats handle dissent by isolating it, smearing it and delegitimizing it in order to crush it.

I grew up in a society where everything you did was eavesdropped on, recorded, snitched on. I had friends when we were kids getting into trouble for telling anecdotes about Communist leaders.

The greatest threat to the security of the people of North Korea comes from the government of North Korea.

On my travels around the world, I've met people in countries where democracy doesn't exist and if it does, they are intimidated into voting in a certain way.

The difference between political terror and ordinary crime becomes clear during the change of regimes, in which former terrorists become well-regarded representatives of their country.

The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim, denounces it, and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.

When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.

Our action will have to be very violent in order to crush a strong and well-organized enemy [the Republicans] as soon as possible. Hence, all leaders of political parties, societies or unions not pledged to our movement will be imprisoned. Such people will be administered exemplary punishment [usually shot] so that movements of rebellion or strikes will be strangles.

When despots rule, cartoonists die.

Fig leaves of democratic procedure … hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship

It is forbidden to work as a teacher under the current puppet regime, because this strengthens the system of the infidels …. If a teacher refuses a warning to give up his job, he must be beaten…. If the teacher still continues to instruct contrary to the principles of Islam, the district commander or a group leader must kill him.

… new authoritarians are conducting an epoch-making historical experiment as to whether regimes that allow private freedoms can endure when they deny their citizens public freedom.