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whether there is still cause for concern about civil abuse from
security forces in autocratic regimes, these regimes have in recent years in
increasingly used legal and bureaucratic tools to paralyze
the opponents. For example, Cambodia, China, Egypt,
Ethiopia, Jordan, Russia,
Tanzania, Thailand,
Uzbekistan and Venezuela introduced increasingly stringent registration requirements
organizations, foreign funding and public assembly. Autocracy
has also taken great liberties in its interpretation and use of already
existing laws prohibiting vaguely defined offenses, such as defamation and
incitement to rebellion, as well as anti-terror legislation. The last catch to
Their arsenal of methods of repression are the new Internet laws.
De
most countries have enacted internet laws to ensure privacy, combat
crime and ensure financial transparency – and with good reason. But autocratic regimes often develop such laws for the purpose of
keep their opponents in check, which they succeed in using an ambiguous
language in the formulation of the laws. For example, when it comes to identifying who poses a societal threat
online, such laws may point to groups or individuals who have “a malicious
will ", which seeks to" oppose the state "," set the security or ideology of the kingdom
at risk »,« distort facts to create public panic »,« promote homosexuality »
or «create anti-state popular movements». Such unspecified definitions
enables the autocrats to portray any opponent as one
security risk – and thus obtain a pretext to sweep the opponent off
the railway at the same time as the inhabitants are frightened to stand behind the regime.
Statutory suppression
There are many examples of this in Southeast Asia: Seven of the ten member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) still have some form of autocracy: authoritarian democracy (Cambodia, Singapore and Myanmar), one-party rule (Laos, Vietnam) , autocratic monarchy (Brunei). . .
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