Is Governmental Tyranny A Thing of the Past? Sadly, Not.

 by Henry Hayter

Looking to the past there are many examples of true tyranny in governments such as within the USSR where censorship of speech ran rampant within the government and led to far more dangerous events under the watchful gaze of Stalin, one example of which being dekulakization, in which an entire class of people were imprisoned or executed in order to engineer the Ukrainian famine Holodomor which resulted in over 3,000,000 deaths. The Holodomor was a bid by Stalin to gain control over the Ukrainian people and also to force the embracement of the collective farms that were introduced within the USSR. This is of course a very extreme example of tyranny from governments, an example which seems highly unlikely to ever re-occur , yet history has taught us that this may not be so; just 15 years after Holodomor occurred a far greater government orchestrated famine occurred in the PRC under Mao’s tyranny. The `Great Leap Forward` resulted in a famine that is estimated to have killed up to 50,000,000 people in just 4 years in an attempt by Mao to industrialise the workers of China and switch the  focus away from agriculture, which clearly ended catastrophically for many people. If this approximation is accurate then the `Great Leap Forward` caused more than 20,000,000 more deaths than the first world war. Both of these given examples demonstrate how governments exercising their power can be truly disastrous for their peoples and warrant the usage of tyranny to describe their actions. Yet are there any modern comparisons to be found?

Image: SFT HQ (Students for a Free Tibet) 

Once again, unfortunately yes. Again in the PRC we see true government tyranny on display, this time it is less widespread than during the `Great Leap Forward` yet perhaps more disturbing. The oppression of the Uyghur Muslim minority in western China is hauntingly to other past events such as the Holocaust. The Chinese Communist Party has allegedly been forcing the sterilisation of Uyghur people to eventually expel the population entirely from China, this can be seen with the decrease in birth rate in Xinjiang province - the province where the majority of Uyghurs live - of 60% since 2018. Furthermore, there are many re-education camps in Xinjiang province operated by the local authorities and by the CCP which house upwards of 1,000,000 Uyghurs in order to re educate them so that they may be integrated with Eastern Chinese culture. Despite this there are only 39 countries with foreign policy condemning China’s actions against the Uyghur including Germany, France, the UK and the USA. Sadly there are many more examples of tyranny in the modern world such as in territories once owned by ISIL (ISIS) where 1% of the Yazidi people were executed by ISIL upon refusal to convert religion to Sunni. This genocide led to half a million Yazidi fleeing the surrounding areas in fear for their lives and seeking asylum in other countries. Whilst ISIS were never recognised as a country they received support from many nations such as Turkey, Pakistan, Syria and even, allegedly the USA (the accusations about Americans support have been made by Donald Trump and by Senator Rand Paul Jr, though the validity of these claims is highly disputed).

It would appear then that there are still many tyrannical events occurring today yet many countries make little attempt to stop them from continuing - once again only 39 of 195 UN-recognised nations are openly against the Uyghur persecution which has been ongoing since 2014.