Dissident
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A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th ce
Václav Havel, playwright and former dissident. Leader of the Velvet Revolution, last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic.
Moscow Helsinki Group members Yuliya Vishnevskaya, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Dina Kaminskaya, Kronid Lyubarsky in Munich, 1978
Saudi Arabian dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi (left) at a 2018 Project on Middle East Democracy forum in Washington, D.C.
Capital punishment
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Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ord
Dissident
…charges) to silence, induce self-censorship or undermine public support for dissidents. In totalitarian countries, dissidents are often incarcerated or executed without explicit political accusations, or due to infringements of the very same laws they are opposing, or because they are supporting civil liberties…
Execution of Louis XVI
Anarchist Auguste Vaillant about to be guillotined in France in 1894
The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1883). Roman Circus Maximus.
The Death of Socrates (1787)