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Dictators

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Rebel fighters stand next to the burning grave site of Syria’s late president Hafez al-Assad at his mausoleum in the family’s ancestral village of Qardaha in the western Latakia province.

Mausoleum of Assad’s father torched as new leader vows to punish those responsible for torture

The world is carefully watching to see if Syria’s new rulers can stabilise the country and avoid unleashing violent revenge.

  • Maya Gebeily and Timour Azhari

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Defectors prepare to release balloons carrying leaflets and a banner denouncing Kim Jong-un in 2016. Such continued campaigns have enraged the Kim regime.

A North Korean voice Kim Jong-un would love to silence

Kim Seongmin was on his way to Pyongyang for certain execution when he jumped out of the window. What he did next has infuriated the North Korean leader.

  • Choe Sang-Hun
A young woman locked up for protesting speaks to a camera to thank Cambodia’s leaders for her freedom.

The next-gen leader and the forced video confessions on Facebook

Observers say Cambodia’s change in leader is just an extension of times before, where opponents were threatened with beatings, “only they are younger”.

  • Zach Hope
The president has declared an early Christmas, but many Venezuelans are in no mood to celebrate.

This country will have Christmas in October. People are not happy

With a nationwide blackout, a broken economy and a widely contested election result there are only so many things a leader can do to win popular support.

  • Julie Turkewitz
Kim Jong-un: South Korea is now a “primary foe”.

‘Grave provocation’: What does North Korea’s Kim Jong-un want?

K-pop is blasting into North Korea once more as bizarre tactics ratchet up tensions on the peninsula. We explore what’s behind this “tit-for-tat” in an Explainer updated from earlier this year.

  • Angus Holland and Jackson Graham
Donald Trump campaigns in Waterloo, Iowa, last month.

Losing sleep over Trump? It’s time to wake up to the real tyrants

Donald Trump is dangerous because he takes too much of our attention. So much so, people become blind to much larger threats.

  • Parnell Palme McGuinness
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Protesters are hit by a police water cannon during clashes at a march marking the 50th anniversary of a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, in Santiago, Chile.

‘They beat you constantly’: Chilean political prisoners reclaim torture sites

Fifty years after a coup ushered in a brutal military rule that imprisoned, disappeared, tortured or killed some 40,000 people, five former prisoners return to the scene of the crimes.

  • Ivan Alvarado and Natalia A. Ramos Miranda
Vladimir Putin still has a lot of support.

If Putin is about to fall, why do 82 per cent of Russians support him?

Russia is sinking deeper into the quagmire of Putinism, and there are few signs that the population is resisting the path the president is leading them down.

  • Lisa Haseldine
I struggled because I wanted to become Korean,” says Monica Macias of her life in North Korea. “Sometimes I felt like an animal in the zoo. In school, the kids … had just never seen a black person before.”

From one dictator dad to another: Monica’s lost childhood in North Korea

Monica Macias was just seven when her African despot father left her with another feared leader, Kim Il-sung.

  • Julia Llewellyn Smith
Participants wave Russian national flags during the “Glory to the Defenders of the Fatherland” concert waiting for Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.

Orphans, songs about spilling blood: Russia takes celebration of war to another level

“They’re trying to militarise the whole society,” said Grigory Yudin, a political philosophy professor at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences.

  • Valerie Hopkins

Original URL: https://www.theage.com.au/topic/dictators-hn9