In Senegal, the president tried to cancel an election. In Niger, a military coup d’état toppled an elected president, who eight months later is still imprisoned in the presidential palace. In Chad, the leading opposition politician was killed in a shootout with security forces. And in Tunisia, once the only democratic success story of the […]
Read MoreTag: Coups D’Etat and Attempted Coups D’Etat
Senegal’s 2024 Election: What to Know
Why does this election matter? It should have been one of Africa’s more boring polls. Senegal, with a ticking economy, is seen as a stable, safe country — no small feat in western Africa, where coups, crises and insurgencies abound. A president regarded as a steady hand is stepping down after two terms. A pool […]
Read MoreSenegal’s President Calls Off a National Election. His Critics Call It a Coup.
Senegal’s president has canceled the election for his replacement three weeks before voting was set to take place, saying that a dispute between the legislative and judicial arms of government over accusations of corruption needed to be resolved first. Speaking on Saturday afternoon from the presidential palace in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, his words live-streamed on […]
Read MoreHaiti Threatened by Armed Environmental Group
In Haiti, as the number of murders soar and kidnappings rise, even the police are fleeing. With no elected president in office and a prime minister widely seen as illegitimate, calls for the government’s ouster are now being heard from an unlikely source: a brigade of armed officers ostensibly responsible for protecting environmentally sensitive areas. […]
Read MoreGuatemala’s Presidential Inauguration is Delayed, Flaring Tempers
Opponents of the anticorruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo delayed his inauguration as president of Guatemala on Sunday, ratcheting political tensions higher in Central America’s most populous country. Confusion around the transition of power emerged shortly after Guatemala’s highest court on Sunday allowed conservative members of Congress opposed to Mr. Arévalo to maintain their leadership of the […]
Read MoreIn Burkina Faso, Criticizing the Army Could Get You Drafted
One Friday earlier this month, just as Dr. Daouda Diallo stepped out of the passport office in the capital of the West African nation of Burkina Faso, four men grabbed him off the street, pushed him into a vehicle and drove off. Dr. Diallo, a pharmacist-turned-rights-activist who had recently been awarded a prestigious prize for […]
Read MoreThere Is Finally Hope of Ousting Myanmar’s Military Junta
For decades, Myanmar’s military junta has withstood both foreign pressure and an array of armed rebel groups opposed to its dominance of the country. But over the past two months, the generals’ aura of invincibility has been significantly dented at home. Resistance forces galvanized by the junta’s coup in 2021 — which seized power from […]
Read MoreAlberto Fujimori Is Ordered Released From Prison in Peru
Peru’s top court on Tuesday ordered former President Alberto Fujimori released from prison, where he is serving a 25-year sentence for human rights violations, defying an order by an international court that the South American country keep him behind bars. The court, Peru’s Constitutional Tribunal, voted 3 to 1 to reaffirm its decision to instate […]
Read MoreBen Rhodes: Henry Kissinger, the Hypocrite
Mr. Kissinger was not uncomfortable with that dynamic. For him, credibility was rooted in what you did more than what you stood for, even when those actions rendered American concepts of human rights and international law void. He helped extend the war in Vietnam and expand it to Cambodia and Laos, where the United States […]
Read MoreJoan Jara, Who Found Justice for Husband Slain After Coup, Dies at 96
Joan Jara, a British-born dancer and instructor who dedicated herself to finding justice for her husband, Victor Jara, a popular Chilean folk singer and songwriter who was killed during the military coup d’état that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to dictatorial power in 1973, died on Nov. 12 in Santiago, Chile. She was 96. Her […]
Read MoreAs Junta Tightens Grip, Niger Is Being Strangled by Sanctions
Since a military coup in Niger this summer, work days for Ahmed Alhousseïni have been consumed with calls from increasingly worried clients and colleagues asking the same questions. How, and where, could they get food? An executive for a leading food importer in Niger, Mr. Alhousseïni said one recent morning that he had spent his […]
Read MoreCoups Are on the Rise. Why?
Following the news lately is enough to make one wonder if coups might be contagious. Military leaders seized power in Gabon on Aug. 30, adding it to a list of at least seven African countries — including Niger just a few weeks earlier — that have experienced military takeovers in the last three years. The […]
Read MoreThe 50th Anniversary of the Chile Coup in Photos
Fifty years ago on Monday, a violent coup ended one of Latin America’s most stable democracies, brought an abrupt halt to the Chilean military’s tradition of noninvolvement in politics and ushered in 17 years of ruthless dictatorship. Salvador Allende, Chile’s socialist president, had embarked on an ambitious agenda that included the nationalization of the copper […]
Read MoreI Watched a Democracy Die. I Don’t Want to Do It Again.
For 50 years, I have been mourning the death of President Salvador Allende of Chile, who was overthrown in a coup the morning of Sept. 11, 1973. For 50 years, I have mourned his death and the many deaths that followed: the execution and disappearance of my friends and so many more unknown women and […]
Read MoreTrump Is Nothing Without Republican Accomplices
The semi-loyalty of leading conservative politicians fatally weakened the immune system of French democracy. The Nazis, of course, finished it off. A half-century later, Spanish politicians responded very differently to a violent assault on Parliament. After four decades of dictatorship, Spain’s democracy was finally restored in the late 1970s, but its early years were marked […]
Read MoreLynn Lynn’s Journey From Rocker to Dissecting Myanmar’s Coup in Film
Long before he became an award-winning filmmaker, Lynn Lynn was already a star. His voice was ubiquitous on the radio, belting out rock songs, and he played sold-out shows in stadiums across the country. Everywhere he went, fans hounded him for selfies and autographs. But all that fame was confined to Myanmar, a country he […]
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