The Dictator Slayers

Meet 12 people brave enough to go toe-to-toe with modern-day strongmen.

It isn’t easy fighting a dictator. You will be harassed and threatened. Your name or reputation can be destroyed, your family torn apart. If you persist, you can be beaten, imprisoned, or worse. And yet, in country after country, people stand up against modern-day strongmen. For the past three years, while doing reporting for my book, The Dictator’s Learning Curve, I met scores of people who take these risks in Caracas and Cairo, Moscow and Kuala Lumpur, Beijing and Belgrade. Some were students, lawyers, or environmentalists. Others were opposition leaders, businesspeople, academics, even ex-military. Although observers consistently underestimate them, it is people like this that spur others to action and test an authoritarian regime’s true resilience. Below, meet 12 people whose courage and perseverance keep dictators up at night.

Anwar Ibrahim, Opposition Leader, Malaysia

“[Malaysian strongman Mahathir Mohamad] probably underestimated me. … He used to tell me that what he dreaded most was to be detained without knowing when he’d be released. So that’s what he did to me. He thought he could break me.”

The leader of Malaysia’s political opposition, Anwar is equal parts cool tactician and fiery campaigner. The regime has repeatedly harassed him and his family with trumped-up lawsuits meant to destroy his reputation while draining his time, energy, and finances. Anwar’s response? To keep up an indefatigable pace. As he told me, “I can’t slow down, because that’s what they want.”
Jimin Lai/AFP/Getty Images.
Nurul Izzah Anwar, Opposition Leader, Malaysia

“We never spoke openly about being involved in politics. But the defining moment was when [my father] was sacked, arrested, and beaten up under police custody. … That was the moment of real political awakening.”

Anwar Ibrahim’s eldest daughter, Nurul Izzah emerged as a new, potent force for the country’s political opposition by winning a parliament seat in a regime stronghold.

At 30, she was elected to the senior leadership of the People’s Justice Party. The Johns Hopkins SAIS-trained legislator is particularly popular with young Malays, who come out in large numbers to hear her speak. Many believe that if the regime does try to sideline Anwar again, Nurul Izzah will be the new face of the opposition.
STR/AFP/Getty Images.
Srdja Popovic, Activist and Political Organizer, Serbia

“Movements are like sharks. They need to constantly move to stay alive. If the shark stops, the shark dies. … Our movement [in Serbia] was successful by maintaining the offensive, constantly moving, and staying one step ahead of the regime.”

In 2000, Popovic was one of a handful of Serbian student leaders who helped topple Slobodan Milosevic. Today, he helps train other people how to rid themselves of dictators. He is one of the founders of the Centre for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS. In the past nine years, his outfit has advised democratic movements in more than 50 countries.

Courtesy of Srdja PopovicCREDIT: .
Yevgenia Chirikova, Environmentalist and Activist, Russia

“Because [Putin] didn’t take into account my opinion, he is being punished.”

Five years ago, Chirikova was a 30-year-old mother of two on maternity leave. Today, she is one of the world’s best-known environmentalists and critics of Vladimir Putin.

Her fight began when she stood up in defense of Khimki Forest, a small oak forest that the Kremlin had illegally marked for demolition. Threats, harassment, and attacks on her and her supporters—including one that left her friend Mikhail Beketov an amputee with partial paralysis and permanent brain damage—did not deter her.

Her fight to save a forest has slowly turned into a fight for political reform. Last December, she was among the civil society leaders to be cheered by tens of thousands of Russians in the streets of Moscow.

Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images.
Boris Nemtsov, Opposition Leader, Russia

“The main idea of Putin [is] to reduce the level of political activity of the population. This is his absolutely cynical strategy. He is lucky when people say ‘nothing depends on my view.’ He is very much afraid of independent views. This is his main idea.”

Nemtsov looks more like an aging rock star than an opposition leader. The former deputy prime minister and legislator is easily one of Putin’s loudest opponents. Besides his sharp-witted attacks, he has also published a series of reports detailing the corruption surrounding Putin and his cronies. When opposition leaders are being dragged off to jail, Nemtsov is likely among them.

Sergei Kulikov/AFP/Getty Images.
Ludmilla Alexeeva, Human Rights Activist, Russia

“The Russian constitution guarantees the same set of freedoms and rights as any Western constitution. But actually only one right is really observed—the right to travel abroad, to leave.”

Alexeeva has seen everything. The 84-year-old human rights defender is one of the only remaining Russian dissidents who can trace her resistance to the Kremlin to Leonid Brezhnev.

When I met her, she was spearheading a movement to win Russians their right to freely assemble. On the morning I sat with her in her Moscow apartment, her phone rang off the hook. She laughed, and said, “[Human rights defenders] are very popular in our country.”
Dmitry Kostyukov/AFP/Getty Images.
Henrique Capriles, Opposition Leader, Venezuela

“It’s not going to be a fair fight, but you have to fight. The challenge is to fight and keep fighting. Whoever gets tired loses.”

Capriles was the youngest Venezuelan ever elected to parliament. He was the youngest speaker of parliament. And he was also one of Hugo Chavez’s youngest political prisoners. (The government drew out the case by transferring it from one judge to the next, as each recused himself. It was passed among more than 40 judges before he received a verdict of “not guilty.”)

In 2008, Capriles came back swinging, unexpectedly defeating a key Chavez ally to become the governor of the state of Miranda. Today, he faces his greatest challenge: find a way to defeat Chavez at the ballot box this October.
Leo Ramirez/AFP/Getty Images.
Maria Corina Machado, Opposition Leader, Venezuela

“Fear does not leave fingerprints. I think it has been Chavez’s biggest and best-used instrument from day one.”

Machado is a veteran of Venezuela’s election wars. In 2004, she co-founded Sumate, an election watchdog group that has kept track of Chavez’s manipulations. She can rattle off demographic data on Venezuelan voters like the best-schooled statistician.

Six years after founding this outfit, she stepped into the political arena: In 2010, she became one of the only independent female representatives in the National Assembly. A natural technocrat with a gift for debate, she is one to watch.
Eitan Abramovich/AFP/Getty Images.
Raul Baduel, Ex-General and Political Prisoner, Venezuela

“Military experience influences everything we do, and yes [Chavez] is military. But we have to be more precise. His specialty is tanks and armored vehicles. … Those units, we call them the armored hurricane. The concept is to roll over your enemies, to flatten them. That’s his approach, to flatten his enemies.”

Few people know Hugo Chavez better than Baduel. They first met as young cadets in Venezuela’s military academy in 1972. They formed a secret military movement in 1982. And in 2002, during the coup that temporarily removed Chavez from office, it was Baduel who sent an elite team of paratroopers to rescue Chavez and reinstall him in the presidential palace.

But when Baduel spoke out against El Comandante in 2007, he soon found himself arrested and imprisoned on charges of corruption. He was sentenced to nearly eight years in prison, but he says that the judge’s decree is meaningless. “When will I leave [prison]?” Baduel asked. “Only when Chavez is out of power.

Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images.
Samira Ibrahim, Political Activist, Egypt

As the soldier tortured her, sending jolts of electricity through her body, Ibrahim said, “You are my brothers. The army and the people are one hand.”

The soldier scoffed and replied, “No, the military is above the nation. And you deserve this.”

Ibrahim was one of 17 women dragged from Tahrir Square by the military on March 9, 2011. They took her a short distance, to the Egyptian Museum, where they tortured her. Later, at another facility, they performed forced “virginity tests” on her and the other female detainees.

I spoke to her a couple days after her release and she insisted I write her story. She has been more fighter than victim, continuing to speak out against the military’s crimes. In December, she won a lawsuit against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, ordering an end to this humiliating abuse of female protesters.

Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images.
Ayman Nour, Opposition Leader, Egypt

“Every [time] Condoleezza came to Egypt while I was in jail, the minute it ends, the minute her visit ends, a disaster would happen in prison. In May 2007, one hour after Condoleezza Rice left Egypt, they broke into my cell and assaulted me physically. I still have 16 scars that remain from that day.”

For nearly five years, Nour was known as Prisoner No. 1,387. It was his punishment for having the temerity to run against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt’s charade of a presidential election in 2005. (He was convicted on forgery charges considered politically motivated.)

Even members of the ruling party would admit, privately, that Nour was a skilled campaigner. And, unlike other members of the opposition, who shied away from such direct clashes with Egypt’s autocratic leader, Nour consistently drew the regime’s direct fire, speaking out against its worst abuses.
Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images.
Pu Zhiqiang, Lawyer, China

“If you come to my office and you want to detain me, OK, then there’s a procedure to go through. You need a certificate to do that. They can’t provide it, so the result is we have dinner, we drink, we talk with each other. We need to face the secret police. Why not try to change them, if you have the chance to do that?”

Pu prefers to speak plainly. It’s what you might expect from one of China’s leading free-speech attorneys. Among the great influences in his life, he cites the first time he read the U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, a landmark case for freedom of the press.

In a courtroom, Pu is a powerful presence, and he has proven adept at using the regime’s own rules against it in a series of cases defending writers, newspapers, and magazines.

In his daily life, he is no less bold. Pu regularly confronts the members of the secret police sent to keep tabs on him. He engages them, argues with them, and tries to change their views. “I tell them, ‘China is going through a transformation. ... Twenty years from now, what will you tell your children you were doing during the transformative years?’”

Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images.