Word: crackdowns
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Concerned by rising militancy among Islamic fundamentalists who object to his secular and pro-Western policies, Sadat has launched a crackdown on dissidents of all persuasions. Over the past two weeks, more than 1,600 of the regime's most vocal opponents-Islamic and Christian militants, political activists, lawyers, journalists, professors-have been rounded up and imprisoned, to stand trial beginning this week. The charges: fomenting sectarian sedition, undermining stability, or simply violating the measure Sadat pushed through last year, known as the "Law of Shame," that makes it illegal to propagate rumors damaging to the state. Fifteen religious...
When a U.S. reporter asked whether he had consulted President Reagan about the crackdown beforehand, Sadat rightly dismissed the question as impertinent, later adding, in bitter jest: "In other times, I would have shot you, but it is democracy I am really suffering from as much as I am suffering from the opposition...
...repression of the past, when tens of thousands were indiscriminately shipped off to labor camps or killed. Nor does it seem that China's leaders are preparing to impose anything like the absolute uniformity in literature and art that was ordained during the Cultural Revolution. But the new crackdown has had a dampening effect on many writers and artists who had been hoping that the government would allow ever greater degrees of free expression...
Much of this new stress on ideology and discipline has puzzled analysts who expected a period of relaxation to follow the harsh crackdown earlier this year. One possible explanation for the campaign is the leaders' concern that any slackness could produce the kind of discontent that erupted during the heyday of the democracy movement of 1978-1979. Another explanation postulates a political compromise between Deng and more conservative law-and-order forces within the party. Some analysts speculate that Deng wants to show party hard-liners he is not soft on dissent so they will go along with...
...Coptic churches but failed to thwart a bomb attack in August, on a Coptic wedding party, that killed three, including two Muslim guests. Last week President Anwar Sadat made good on his threat to deal harshly with what his government has described as "sectarian sedition." In the most sweeping crackdown since he took power nearly eleven years ago, Sadat's government banned six political publications and jailed at least 1,100 of his most volatile critics: religious figures, politicians, lawyers and journalists...