Visible and Invisible Bars

Key findings

Political imprisonment is a key tool for limiting dissent, and accompanies wider democratic erosion. Prison sentences, detentions, and prosecutions against government opponents surged during times of political tension in six countries that have experienced recent democratic decline: Nicaragua, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, and Venezuela. Those targeted may be held behind bars for prolonged periods of time without formal sentencing, preventing them from engaging in opposition politics, journalism, and human rights work. In addition to a physical toll, imprisonment also carries heavy psychological and financial costs that can extend to prisoners’ families.

For every political prisoner behind bars, many more government opponents face subtler constraints amounting to “civil death.” Antidemocratic leaders have targeted dissidents and government critics with other forms of repression that prevent them from doing their work and participating normally in society—a condition experts call “civil death.” Tactics of civil death include control over travel, physical monitoring, blacklisting, and seizure of assets. These restrictions usually occur in combination, and can be enacted through official and unofficial means, by state and nonstate actors. We observed combined restrictions amounting to civil death in each of the six countries under study.

Subservient judiciaries facilitate political imprisonment and civil death at the behest of autocratic regimes. Leaders able to gain control of the judiciary can use the courts as powerful tools of repression. Targeted individuals also lose access to critical mechanisms for recourse and accountability when the judiciary acts in the interests of the executive. Independently minded members of the judiciary are themselves at risk of becoming targets of state persecution, and their removal and replacement with loyalists further erodes the institution.

Countering political imprisonment and civil death is crucial in the fight for freedom. Political imprisonment and civil death empower illiberal leaders by removing their most vigorous and effective critics from society. These tactics can take place in countries that are experiencing democratic erosion, but have not hardened into authoritarian regimes. Monitoring for political imprisonment and civil death tactics, and taking action when they are present, are critical in the fight to counter authoritarianism, support agents of democratic change, and prevent future waves of repression.

Introduction

"The state does not lack imagination in trying to intimidate people into being quiet."1

–Tanzanian civil society activist

An opposition leader is behind bars, accused of a host of bogus crimes ahead of national elections. A teenager is charged with defaming the monarchy after calling for democratic change in her country. She is blocked from returning to school after being released from detention on bail. A human rights defender, as he attempts to travel abroad for work, learns he is under investigation for terrorism and has been placed under a travel ban. His colleague has been languishing in pretrial detention for more than a year. A judge is dismissed after the president of her country suspends the parliament; her state pension and health insurance are then frozen.

These are only a handful of examples of how undemocratic regimes prevent real and perceived opponents—including human rights defenders, journalists, political activists, opposition leaders, civil servants, government defectors, protesters, and ordinary people—from leading their lives. The most visible tactic is political imprisonment, whether through politicized prosecutions and prison sentences, or pretrial measures that can keep individuals detained for months or years before their cases are resolved.

But for every political prisoner behind bars, many more government opponents and critics face subtler constraints, amounting to what some experts call “civil death.” While the term has different meanings in different fields of study,2 Freedom House focuses on civil death as a condition where opponents are deprived of the ability to participate in society through some combination of repressive methods including control over travel, physical monitoring, blacklisting, and seizure of assets. In practice, these methods can manifest through travel bans and confiscated passports, police posted outside someone’s home for all the neighbors to see, difficulty finding or retaining a job due to social stigma or blacklisting, expulsion from university, seizure of property, and freezing of bank accounts. They can be connected to conditions for release from political detention or imprisonment, or be imposed on their own, whether on official orders or through societal pressure. Targets often face more than one method simultaneously, with the suffocating accumulation of effects preventing them from working or living a normal life.

Political imprisonment3 and, to some extent, repressive tactics that cause civil death, garner significant attention in regimes with long histories of authoritarianism, such as China, Iran, and North Korea. But, use of these strategies to punish and silence opponents and critics is also pronounced in environments that have more recently experienced democratic erosion. Through our research, we sought to understand how aspiring or recent autocratic leaders suppress individual opponents, and how those methods manifest during periods of democratic degradation. This report examines such dynamics in six countries that underwent significant democratic decline within the last 20 years: Nicaragua, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, and Venezuela.

• 1Interview with a Tanzanian civil society actor who requested anonymity, July 2023.
• 2https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1067&cont…; National Council on Disability, “Beyond Guardianship: Toward Alternatives That Promote Greater Self-Determination,” March 22, 2018, https://ncd.gov/sites/default/files/NCD_Guardianship_Report_Accessible…; Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “UN rights expert urges action to end ‘civil death’ of persons affected by leprosy,” June 19, 2018, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2018/06/un-rights-expert-urges-….
• 3“Political imprisonment” is used in this report as a shorthand for politicized prison sentences, as well as politicized detentions, prosecutions, and investigations against real or perceived government opponents or critics. “Government opponent” includes critics and those voicing dissent.

The report is based on interviews with 42 country experts, supplemented by desk research. Among those interviewed were civil society actors, human rights defenders, journalists, researchers, and academics; several of them have endured political imprisonment and elements of civil death themselves. Quotations have been lightly edited for clarity.

Political imprisonment has helped to limit dissent amid a wider environment of democratic erosion in each of the six countries under review. Additionally, we observed that tactics contributing to civil death—control over travel, physical monitoring, blacklisting, and seizure of assets—have also occurred in all six countries. Political imprisonment and measures of civil death have accompanied undemocratic power grabs, mass antigovernment demonstrations, and election campaigns. Moreover, they are wielded in countries that have yet to harden into authoritarian systems; their use did not begin upon reaching the depths of authoritarianism (and some have yet to reach them) but rather at points when each country was rated Partly Free or Free by Freedom in the World, Freedom House’s annual report on political rights and civil liberties. We find that political imprisonment and civil death occur in parallel with democratic degradation.

The risk that these tactics will be wielded against democracy’s most strident defenders, who are bravely working in countries around the world experiencing democratic erosion, is serious and concerning. In addition to effectively removing opponents and dissidents from society, political imprisonment and civil death can have devastating physical, psychological, and economic effects for those targeted, as well as for their loved ones. Yet opportunities for recourse and accountability are limited, as pliant judicial systems support unjust confinement, and judges themselves can become targets if they do not toe the line.

“Any sort of tool that they could use to control society, they do,” said Christopher Hernandez-Roy, the deputy director and senior fellow of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has documented severe human rights abuses amid mass repression in Venezuela.1 Still, a wide range of actors continue to bravely push back against authoritarianism.

• 1Interview with Christopher Hernandez-Roy, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Americas Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 2023.

Visible bars: Political imprisonment amid declining democracy

"They arrested famous politicians, leaders of the political parties, judges and lawyers. Who am I? I could disappear, and nobody will even hear about me."1

– Civil society actor

Politicized prison sentences, detentions, and prosecutions occur around the world, but their use is not limited to the most hardened authoritarian regimes. These tactics have been documented in places experiencing many forms of democratic erosion, as illustrated in each of the six cases that Freedom House examined for this study. We found that imprisonment emerges amid both sudden and gradual dismantling of democratic institutions, with significant physical, psychological, and financial impacts on the imprisoned and those near to them.

Escalations of political imprisonment

Power grabs, including through coups d’état, often feature harsh campaigns of political imprisonment that significantly raise the costs of challenging undemocratic actions. In Thailand, which has been plagued by military coups,2 hundreds of people including politicians, journalists, and activists were placed in military detention after the most recent putsch in 2014. Typically held for up to seven days, this tactic was known as “attitude adjustment.”3 Following significant democratic progress in Tunisia in the decade that followed Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s ouster, President Kaïs Saïed in July 2021 suspended the parliament, ultimately dissolving it the following year, dismantled the country’s newly democratic institutions, and held a constitutional referendum that strengthened executive power. Since Saïed’s power grab, at least eight leaders of major opposition parties have been held in pretrial detention on unsubstantiated national security charges, journalists and human rights defenders have been detained under a repressive new cybercrime law, and businesspeople, lawyers, and others have found themselves implicated in vague “conspiracy” cases.4

Failed coups have also spurred democratic erosion alongside political imprisonment. After an attempted coup in 2016, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pushed through a constitutional reform that effectively turned Turkey into a country ruled by presidential decree. The new powers have enabled Erdoğan to imprison and detain virtually anyone who poses a threat: “Whoever is being effective, you go after them,” said a Turkish civil society actor.5 Journalists, opposition members, and academics are among those who have faced lengthy pretrial detention and harsh prison sentences.6

Long-lasting regimes that have not hardened into fully authoritarian systems also employ political imprisonment, with rates of detentions varying over time. In Tanzania, the 2015 presidential victory of John Magufuli, the candidate of the Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party that has dominated politics for decades, in an unusually close election ushered in an unprecedented period of repression targeting the political opposition, media, civil society, and anyone else seen as posing a challenge to the regime. New and preexisting laws were used to target opponents, including an act regulating political parties and a ban on political rallies selectively applied to the opposition that resulted in arrests.7

Resistance to growing authoritarian rule in Nicaragua and Venezuela prompted violent crackdowns, including mass arbitrary detentions, that were made possible after the systematic dismantling of democratic institutions and consolidation of executive power. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez laid the groundwork for large-scale political imprisonment by his successor, Nicolás Maduro, including by packing the courts and through various new legislation. While Chávez did not jail his opponents frequently,8 Maduro significantly escalated the use of political imprisonment and wide-scale violence, particularly amid mass antigovernment protests in 2014, 2017, and 2019.9 “With Maduro, what we saw was a return to systematic classic repression—arbitrary arrest, abuse on the streets, no due process, torture in detention,” Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Rule of Law Program director for Inter-American Dialogue, told Freedom House.10 According to the nongovernmental organization Foro Penal, nearly 16,000 people were politically imprisoned in Venezuela between January 2014 and December 2022. In comparison, the organization reported that there were just 11 political prisoners at the time of Chávez’s death in 2013.11

• 1Interview with Radwan Masmoudi, president of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, August 2023, speaking on behalf of citizens and activists based in Tunisia.
• 2https://www.uky.edu/~clthyn2/coup_data/home.htm.
• 3https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/10/25/speak-out-dangerous/criminalizati…. See also interviews with Akarachai Chaimaneekarakate, advocacy lead for Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, August 2023; Tyrell Haberkorn, Director of Graduate Studies, Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, July 2023; and Bencharat Sae Chua, Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Mahidol University, Thailand, July 2023.
• 4https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2023/07/human-rights-under-….
• 5Interview with a Turkish civil society actor, June 2023.
• 6https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/05/14/turkey-government-targeting-academi…; Human Rights Watch, “Turkey: Release Politicians Wrongfully Detained for 7 Years,” November 3, 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/03/turkey-release-politicians-wrongful…; Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA) Stakeholder report, Universal Periodic Review 35th Session, Turkey.
• 7https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/human_rights…; Freedom House, “Tanzania,” in Freedom in the World 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/country/tanzania/freedom-world/2019.
• 8See, for example, interviews with Christopher Hernandez-Roy, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Americas Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 2023; and Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Rule of Law Program Director for Inter-American Dialogue, August 2023.
• 9Interview with a representative from the Center for Defenders and Justice, July 2023.
• 10Interview with Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Rule of Law Program Director for Inter-American Dialogue, August 2023.
• 11https://foropenal.com/reporte-sobre-la-represion-en-venezuela-ano-2022/; Alfredo Romero, “The Repression Clock: A Strategy Behind Autocratic Regimes,” Wilson Center Latin American Program, July 2020, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/uploads/document….

Invisible bars: The impact of civil death

"The civil death was terrible."1

– Nicaraguan human rights defender

Physically confining government opponents and critics in detention and prison is a highly visible strategy for removing individuals from society. Beyond bars, however, is a litany of other tactics that erode the ability of human rights defenders, journalists, political activists and opposition figures, and countless others to live a normal life, let alone to pursue work aimed at advancing democracy and human rights. Several interviewees characterized this as “civil death.”2 Civil death has also been recognized as a tactic by supporters of authoritarian leaders. For example, in 2016, a progovernment journalist in Turkey called for dissident academics to face “civil death.”3

Civil death as a concept is not new and has been applied differently across a variety of contexts in literature and in other reports. These include conditions for government opponents and critics in authoritarian settings, analysis of contemporary and antiquated law that used the term, and discrimination against people with disabilities or certain diseases.4 Our focus is on the former: its use to deprive opponents from participating in society through some combination of restrictive methods. Though not an exhaustive list, we have broadly categorized these methods as: controlling international and domestic travel, physically monitoring targets, limiting employment and educational opportunities and state services (blacklisting), and seizing property and other assets.

These measures can be attached to arrests, investigations, and conditions for release, or wielded on their own. They can be formally applied, with or without notice, or derive from social pressure. Closely connected to civil death is the constant reminder that prison is just one wrong move away.

The tactics that amount to civil death are most potent when used in combination. For example, close monitoring of an individual can have implications for their ability to travel locally and internationally. Monitoring can also be highly visible, with police officers swarming people’s homes and questioning their neighbors, resulting in significant social pressure that can limit job prospects and lead to informal blacklisting. This blurring of tactics, and therefore of outcomes, underscores that civil death is not the result of singular, easily categorizable methods; rather, repressive tactics interact and blend with one another to create obstacles from all angles. In all six countries under study, we found that some combination of these tactics of civil death were applied to government opponents.

Because tactics of civil death are more subtle than outright imprisonment, repressive regimes can employ them to target large numbers of government opponents and critics with less scrutiny from international organizations, democratic governments, and other actors. These measures can also serve as an extended layer of control after a prison sentence or detention period has ended. Overall, the pressures amounting to civil death help to dissuade opposition and criticism, making it more difficult to enact democratic change over the long run.

• 1Interview with a Nicaraguan human rights defender, August 2023.
• 2See, for example, interviews with Berna Akkızal, executive director and cofounder of the Civic Spaces Association, August 2023; a Nicaraguan journalist, July 2023; a Turkish academic who requested anonymity, July 2023; and a Nicaraguan human rights defender, August 2023.
• 3Cem Küçük, “‘Medeni Ölüm’ mekanizmaları! [‘Civil death’ mechanisms!],” Star, January 16, 2016, https://www.star.com.tr/yazar/medeni-olum-mekanizmalari-yazi-1082729/.
• 4See, for example, Amnesty International, “No End in Sight: Purged Public Sector Workers Denied a Future in Turkey,” May 22, 2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur44/6272/2017/en/; Amnesty International, “Silence at any cost: State tactics to deepen the repression in Nicaragua,” February 15, 2021, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr43/3398/2021/en/; Gabriel J. Chin, “The New Civil Death: Rethinking Punishment in the Era of Mass Conviction,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 160, no. 6 (2012): 1789-1833, https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1067&cont…; National Council on Disability, “Beyond Guardianship: Toward Alternatives That Promote Greater Self-Determination,” March 22, 2018, https://ncd.gov/sites/default/files/NCD_Guardianship_Report_Accessible…; Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “UN rights expert urges action to end ‘civil death’ of persons affected by leprosy,” June 19, 2018, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2018/06/un-rights-expert-urges-….

Control over travel

Restrictions on international and domestic travel were widespread in the six countries examined for this study. Mechanisms to curb movement include travel bans, control over passports, requirements to report to courts or police stations, and other measures that significantly disrupt everyday life and participation in society.

Travel bans often accompany criminal investigations or are included as a condition for release. Ahead of the 2021 general elections in Nicaragua, Cristiana Chamorro, one of a number of presidential candidates who faced criminal investigation ahead of the polls, was placed under house arrest after announcing her candidacy and formally banned from leaving Nicaragua, among other measures.1 In early 2023, in Tunisia, government critics Chaima Issa and Lazhar Akremi were detained on baseless charges of “conspiring against state security” and held for five months; conditions for their release include a ban from traveling and “appearing in public spaces,”2 which was described by one activist as “a house arrest that doesn’t say its name.”3 In Venezuela, after authorities violently suppressed mass antigovernment protests starting in 2014, many political detainees were also released under conditions that included bans on travel.4

In some cases, travel bans are issued with no notification. Shortly after Saïed assumed exceptional powers in 2021, his government imposed travel bans on scores of Tunisians, many of whom only found out upon arrival at the airport. This lack of notification or documentation leaves victims with little recourse or ability to appeal, including because it is often unclear which agency imposed the ban.5

In other cases, separate restrictions amount to de facto travel bans. Many of the politicians, activists, academics, and journalists summoned to military camps for “attitude adjustment” after the 2014 coup in Thailand were released after signing agreements promising to obtain permission before traveling abroad, among other conditions. Failure to comply would result in renewed detention, a prison sentence, or a fine.6 Similar impediments to travel resurfaced amid the prodemocracy protests in 2020 and 2021; defendants granted bail had to secure court permission to leave the country, and it was often denied.7

Surveillance can also function as a travel restriction. A representative from the Organization against Torture in Tunisia explained that regular police visits to the homes of Tunisian opposition figures amounted in practice to restrictions on movement: “Even if they are not banned from traveling, they find themselves harassed by police agents or police officers who come to their houses, who ask them to inform the police station before leaving the [region].”8 One year before Nicaragua’s 2021 election, police officers began to regularly monitor presumed presidential candidates Félix Maradiaga and Juan Sebastián Chamorro. Before they were ultimately charged and sentenced, security forces blocked both opposition figures from leaving their homes and informed them that they were forbidden to leave the capital city of Managua.9

Arbitrary state control over passports and immigration processes also constrain travel. In Tanzania, baseless questions over citizenship have led to passport confiscations for civil society leaders and journalists. These investigations can take years to resolve, and severely impede targets’ ability to work and live.10 Since 2017, Venezuelan immigration authorities have confiscated or canceled the passports of opposition figures, activists, journalists, and other opponents, while government authorities have refused to renew or issue such documents.11 Since the 2018 crackdown in Nicaragua, officials have made it increasingly difficult for human rights defenders, journalists, priests, government officials, and judicial personnel to enter or exit the country, and began to confiscate passports outright in 2022.12 Similarly, following the 2016 attempted coup in Turkey, those facing open investigations have been deemed “unfit” to have a passport, even before any verdict is handed down in their cases.13 This comes in addition to the mass revocation of more than 100,000 individuals’ passports soon after the attempted coup.14

Required reporting to a court or police station at regular intervals is another means to control travel and monitor opponents and critics. Though political detainees linked to antigovernment demonstrations in Nicaragua were released as part of an amnesty agreement in 2019, many were still required to register periodically at police stations. More recently, Nicaraguan police acted in coordination to detain 57 people on May 3, 2023, journalists and human rights defenders among them. While they were quickly released, judges ordered them to report daily to the nearest police station,15 with many losing their jobs as a result of having to adhere to this stringent requirement.16 Many political detainees released in Venezuela are required to report to a court at regular periods.17

Controls on movement can have a deleterious effect not just on advocacy work, but also employment and education. A representative from Venezuela’s Center for Defenders and Justice, describing the situation for a human rights defender and journalist who had been detained, explained: “This victim usually has to travel to conferences and to carry out his work outside the country. One of the punishments they gave him was the travel ban. So, for more than one year, he cannot travel.”18 For students, travel bans limit their ability to study at foreign universities. Requirements for regular reporting to a court or police station can also make it difficult to retain or find employment or to attend classes.19

Restrictions on travel can also lead to family separation. A human rights defender explained that travel restrictions levied by the Nicaraguan regime not only prevented exiles from returning home—the measures also kept family members from visiting them abroad for fear they may be denied reentry to Nicaragua: “Neither one can return, nor one can leave, for fear that the same thing will happen to them.”20 Civil death is not limited to the government’s primary target; anyone in their orbit can be ensnared.

• 1Human Rights Watch, “Critics Under Attack: Harassment and Detention of Opponents, Rights Defenders and Journalists Ahead of Elections in Nicaragua,” June 22, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/06/22/critics-under-attack/harassment-a….
• 2Amnesty International, “Tunisia: Jailed opposition figures on hunger strike: Jaouhar Ben Mbarek, Khayyam Turki, Issam Chebbi, Ghazi Chaouachi, Ridha Belhaj and Abdelhamid Jelassi,” October 5, 2023, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde30/7273/2023/en.
• 3Amnesty International UK, “Tunisia: Jailed Opposition Figures on Hunger Strike,” October 5, 2023, https://www.amnesty.org.uk/urgent-actions/jailed-opposition-figures-hun…. See also interview with an activist focused on Tunisia who requested anonymity, August 2023.
• 4UN Human Rights Council, Detailed findings of the independent international factfinding mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, A/HRC/45/CRP.11 (September 15, 2020).
• 5See, for example, interview with Nate Grubman, political scientist researching Tunisian politics, June 2023.
• 6Human Rights Watch, “To Speak Out is Dangerous: Criminalization of Peaceful Expression in Thailand,” October 24, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/10/25/speak-out-dangerous/criminalizati….
• 7See, for example, interviews with Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a Thai scholar and activist, July 2023; Akarachai Chaimaneekarakate, advocacy lead for Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, August 2023; Tyrell Haberkorn, Director of Graduate Studies, Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, July 2023; Kevin Hewison, Emeritus Professor, Department of Asian Studies, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, July 2023; and Bencharat Sae Chua, Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Mahidol University, Thailand, July 2023.
• 8Interview with a representative from the Organization against Torture in Tunisia, July 2023.
• 9Human Rights Watch, “Critics Under Attack: Harassment and Detention of Opponents, Rights Defenders and Journalists Ahead of Elections in Nicaragua,” June 22, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/06/22/critics-under-attack/harassment-a….
• 10Human Rights Watch, “'As Long as I am Quiet, I am Safe': Threats to Independent Media and Civil Society in Tanzania,” October 28, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/10/28/long-i-am-quiet-i-am-safe/threats….
• 11Alfredo Romero, “The Repression Clock: A Strategy Behind Autocratic Regimes,” Wilson Center Latin American Program, July 2020, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/uploads/document….
• 12“País por cárcel: así secuestra el régimen de Ortega los pasaportes de los nicaragüenses [Country for prison: this is how the Ortega regime seizes the passports of Nicaraguans],” Divergentes, December 6, 2022, https://www.divergentes.com/pais-por-carcel-asi-secuestra-el-regimen-de…. See also interview with Yaritzha Mairena, representative of the National Union of Nicaraguan Political Prisoners, August 2023.
• 13Interview with a civil society actor based in Turkey who requested anonymity, July 2023.
• 14Amnesty International, “No End in Sight: Purged Public Sector Workers Denied a Future in Turkey,” May 22, 2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur44/6272/2017/en/; Ali Yildiz, “Turkey’s Disregard for the Freedom of Movement,” Verfassungsblog, December 11, 2019, https://verfassungsblog.de/turkeys-disregard-for-the-freedom-of-movemen….
• 15“Encarcelamientos nocturnos y juicios exprés son ‘arbitrarios y anómalos’ [Night arrests and express trials are ‘arbitrary and anomalous’],” Confidencial, May 6, 2023, https://confidencial.digital/nacion/abogada-yonarqui-martinez-anomalo-p…; “Unos 65 opositores a Ortega han sido detenidos en lo que va de mayo, según observatorio [Some 65 opponents of Ortega have been arrested so far in May, according to observations by Blue and White Monitor],” SWI swissinfo.ch, May 20, 2023, https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/nicaragua-crisis_unos-65-opositores-a-orte….
• 16See, for example, interview with a Nicaraguan human rights defender, August 2023.
• 17See, for example, interviews with Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Rule of Law Program Director for Inter-American Dialogue, August 2023; Franz von Bergen, Venezuelan journalist, June 2023; a representative from Center for Defenders and Justice, July 2023; and a Venezuelan civil society leader, August 2023.
• 18Interview with a representative from the Center for Defenders and Justice, July 2023.
• 19See, for example, interviews with Berna Akkızal, executive director and cofounder of the Civic Space Studies Association, August 2023; and a Nicaraguan human rights defender, August 2023.
• 20Interview with a Nicaraguan human rights defender, August 2023.

Attacks on judicial independence and limited recourse

A key finding that emerges from the six country case studies, and that has consequences for embattled democracies around the world, is the central role of a compliant judiciary. In addition to serving as a key enabler of political imprisonment and civil death, declines in judicial independence drastically limit victims’ opportunities for recourse and accountability. At the same time, in an autocratizing environment, members of the judiciary can themselves become political prisoners and victims of civil death, compounding declines in judicial independence.

Aspiring autocrats who won elections set out to overhaul the judiciary in multiple cases examined by Freedom House. Before he became the president of Nicaragua in 2007, Daniel Ortega, through an alliance with then president Arnoldo Alemán, was able to secure a number of favored appointees to an expanded Supreme Court; the courts had also retained judges who were allied with Ortega even before this pact.1 By the time antigovernment protests erupted in 2018, a compliant judiciary was seated and served as a key facilitator of politicized detentions, prosecutions, and imprisonment.2

The situation is similar in Venezuela. After Chávez’s ascent to the presidency in 1999, he effectively gained power to dismiss judges and reshape the judicial system via Chavista-dominated legislative bodies. They subsequently worked through an emergency commission to fire or suspend judges on dubious corruption allegations and later packed the Supreme Court. Because the Supreme Court controls lower-court appointments, the wider judicial system gradually became even less independent.3 Chávez’s transformation of the Venezuelan judiciary made possible the mass repression that started under Maduro in 2014,4 as well as the lack of legitimate avenues for recourse.

Similarly, Erdoğan has steadily weakened judicial independence in Turkey. The flaws of an already politicized judiciary were further compounded via a 2010 constitutional referendum that empowered Erdoğan to restructure it, allowing for sham trials against individuals and institutions perceived as opposing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).5 A 2018 constitutional referendum granted Erdoğan even more power to appoint members of the judiciary.6 Court decisions that favor defendants have also proven ineffective in practice, including a 2019 ruling that reversed earlier punishments and defended the free speech of the Academics for Peace: despite the favorable ruling, many group members experienced elements of civil death anyway. For example, some were unable to find work in academia because Erdoğan has appointed progovernment university rectors not inclined to rehire dissenting academics.7

In Tunisia, soon after his suspension of the parliament in 2021, President Saïed dissolved the High Judicial Council and replaced it with a temporary body whose members were appointed by decree.8 Saïed later issued a decree allowing himself to dismiss any judge without due process, and then fired 57 judges over alleged financial and moral corruption.9 Though the Administrative Court of Tunis suspended 49 of the dismissals, the Justice Ministry has refused to reinstate the judges.10 “Institutions practically no longer exist,” said a former Tunisian political prisoner. “[We] have judges who are scared to decide on cases…When a society lacks justice, it’s screwed.”11

Military and special jurisdiction courts, which further limit due process rights, are also used against government opponents and critics. Politicized cases in Venezuela, for instance, may be tried in military courts or special jurisdiction courts for terrorism cases.12 For a time after the 2014 military coup in Thailand, certain crimes, such as lèse-majesté, sedition, and violations of military junta orders and announcements, fell under military jurisdiction.13

Judges themselves are also at risk of becoming targets. Following the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, the government purged over 4,000 judges and prosecutors,14 and over 2,000 were detained for suspected involvement in the conspiracy or membership in a terrorist organization.15 Two of the 57 magistrates dismissed in Tunisia were arrested and detained for months without trial.16 Pushback against attacks on judicial independence has also been punished: when a Tunisian judge helped to organize a strike in protest of the arbitrary dismissals, the Temporary High Judicial Council lifted his immunity as a judge and a criminal investigation was opened against him for “incitement.”17

In Venezuela, Judge María Lourdes Afiuni was deprived of her liberty for years, in a case that served as a warning to other judges that they had little protection from severe and arbitrary state reprisals.18 In 2009, Afiuni had ordered the supervised release of a banker accused of financial crimes because he had been held without conviction for longer than the legal limit; the individual subsequently fled the country. Shortly after her decision, Afiuni was arrested on corruption charges, held in detention, and then, two years later, placed under house arrest before being released on the condition that she not leave Venezuela, among other measures. In 2019, she was sentenced to five years in prison.19 (The sentence has yet to be executed.)

In a major clash between high courts in Turkey, the country’s top appeals court not only struck down the Constitutional Court’s November 2023 decision that Can Atalay, a lawyer and elected member of parliament who has been detained since April 2022, should be released, but filed criminal complaints against the Constitutional Court members who voted to release him.20 Separately, in Venezuela and Tanzania, judges who fell afoul of authorities have been transferred arbitrarily, sometimes to far-flung jurisdictions.21

Moreover, the rulings of regional justice bodies, which should serve as a last resort, are not always upheld. The Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that a binding Inter-American Court decision to reverse opposition figure Leopoldo López’s ban on seeking office was unimplementable, as it conflicted with the country’s constitution and violated its sovereignty.22 Turkey has ignored the European Court of Human Rights’s order to release philanthropist and civic leader Osman Kavala and opposition politician Selahattin Demirtaş, while in 2019 the Tanzanian government withdrew its citizens’ right to directly file cases with the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights; Tanzania had had the highest number of cases and judgments issued against it.23

Lack of judicial independence on a systemic level leaves few avenues for recourse for government opponents and critics facing political imprisonment or civil death. While the resilience of a handful of independently minded judges may be a source of hope, they enjoy few protections themselves, and operate at their own risk.

• 1Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Nicaragua: Concentration of power and the undermining of the Rule of Law,” October 25, 2021, https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/2021_nicaragua-en.pdf.
• 2Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Persons Deprived of Liberty in Nicaragua,” October 5, 2020, http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/Nicaragua-PPL-en.pdf.
• 3UN Human Rights Council, Report of the independent international fact-finding mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, A/HRC/48/69 (December 28, 2021).
• 4UN Human Rights Council, Report of the independent international fact-finding mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, A/HRC/45/33 (September 25, 2020).
• 5Gareth H. Jenkins, “From Politicization to Monopolization? The AKP’s New Judicial Reforms,” Turkey Analyst 4, no. 3 (February 7, 2011), https://www.turkeyanalyst.org/publications/turkey-analyst-articles/item….
• 6Freedom House, “Turkey,” in Freedom in the World 2023, https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkey/freedom-world/2023.
• 7Nóemi Lévy-Aksu, “Turkish Constitutional Court rules that the convictions of Academics for Peace violate their rights,” London School of Economics and Political Science Department of Gender Studies, January 2020, https://www.lse.ac.uk/gender/news/2020/Turkish-Constitutional-Court-rul….
• 8Amnesty International, “Tunisia: President’s moves to shut down High Judicial Council pose grave threat to human rights,” February 8, 2022, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/tunisia-presidents-moves….
• 9Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Tunisia: Presidential decrees undermine judicial independence and access to justice, says UN expert,” July 15, 2022, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/07/tunisia-presidential-de….
• 10Human Rights Watch, “Tunisia: President Intensifies Attacks on Judicial Independence,” February 27, 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/27/tunisia-president-intensifies-attac….
• 11Interview with a former Tunisian political prisoner who requested anonymity, July 2023.
• 12Interview with a representative from the Center for Defenders and Justice, July 2023.
• 13Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Thailand: UN rights expert concerned by the continued use of lèse-majesté prosecutions,” February 6, 2017, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2017/02/thailand-un-rights-expe…; “Compare civilian and military courts when dealing with lese majeste cases,” Prachatai, December 3, 2014, https://prachataienglish.com/node/4554.
• 14İnsan Hakları Ortak Platformu, “21 July 2016-20 March 2018 State of Emergency in Turkey: Updated Situation Report,” April 17, 2018, https://www.ihop.org.tr/en/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SoE_17042018.pdf.
• 15Turkey Tribunal, “Mass Dismissals of Judges and Prosecutors in Turkey of Post-Coup Period,” April 21, 2022, https://turkeytribunal.org/actuality/mass-dismissals-of-judges-and-pros….
• 16“Tunisia Cuffs Two Former Judges,” Voice of America, February 13, 2023, https://www.voaafrica.com/a/tunisia-cuffs-two-former-judges/6960771.html.
• 17Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Tunisia: Judges’ right to association and protest must be respected, say UN experts,” September 14, 2022, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/09/tunisia-judges-right-as….
• 18See, for example, interviews with Christopher Hernandez-Roy, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Americas Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 2023; Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Rule of Law Program Director for Inter-American Dialogue, August 2023; and Franz von Bergen, Venezuelan journalist, June 2023.
• 19Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Venezuela: UN expert condemns further sentence against Judge Afiuni, says clearly act of reprisal,” March 26, 2019, https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2019/03/venezuela-un-expert-condemns-furt….
• 20“Clash between Constitutional and appeals courts raises concerns over rule of law in Turkey,” Associated Press, November 9, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/turkey-high-courts-clash-imprisoned-lawmaker…; Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), “Constitutional crisis - Can Atalay Controversy in the Judiciary,” November 9, 2023, https://www.mlsaturkey.com/en/constitutional-crisis-can-atalay-controve….
• 21UN Human Rights Council, Detailed findings of the independent international factfinding mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, A/HRC/48/CRP.5 (September 16, 2021); interview with a Tanzanian civil society actor who requested anonymity, July 2023.
• 22Human Rights Watch, “Venezuela: Implement Inter-American Court Ruling,” September 20, 2011, https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/20/venezuela-implement-inter-american-….
• 23Amnesty International, “Tanzania: Withdrawal of individual rights to African Court will deepen repression,” December 2, 2019, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2019/12/tanzania-withdr….

Moving forward

Political imprisonment and tactics of civil death are crucial tools that authoritarian and undemocratic leaders use in an effort to remove their most strident critics from society. Moreover, employing the more subtle tactics of civil death against opponents allows them to evade the external scrutiny and outcry that political imprisonment often generates. In each of our six country case studies, we found that political imprisonment and tactics of civil death befell government opponents as they undertook a range of work to support democracy and fundamental rights. We further found that these attempts to banish them from society accompanied periods of stark democratic decline.

Despite the labyrinthine ordeal that human rights defenders, democracy activists, journalists, political oppositionists, protesters, and ordinary people undergo, or are in danger of undergoing in autocratizing settings, the work of brave individuals working to expose and counter authoritarian abuses offers reason for hope. Even at significant risk, civil society organizations document rights violations and provide assistance to victims; defense lawyers advocate for clients who languish in jail, face farcical prosecutions, or are subjected to arbitrary travel bans; and families come forward to denounce their loved ones’ unjust confinement and mistreatment, seek solutions and advocate for their release, and, along the way, create shared connections with those who face similarly horrid circumstances. In the courts, remaining impartial judges and prosecutors are still working to uphold due process and reject politized persecution—but the risks they take in doing so underline the importance of preventing the degradation of judicial independence in the first place.

These diverse efforts serve to remind democracy’s defenders that the struggle toward freedom, even in increasingly challenging environments, is not in vain. Working to secure the unconditional release of political prisoners is one step that international actors and democratic governments should take to complement local advocacy.

The challenges that political prisoners and their families face do not end after release, though. Also important is providing resources in the long term, including for psychosocial and medical treatment. Meanwhile, recognizing the less visible tactics amounting to civil death, and shining a light upon them, can increase the cost of imposing such restrictions in the first place. These are only some of the actions that must be taken in order to counter authoritarianism and prevent future waves of repression.

About the Report

As part of Freedom House’s work to help free political prisoners and push back against the jailing of activists as a tool of repression, this report examines the use of political imprisonment as a tactic used by autocrats and aspiring autocrats to punish and silence their opponents and critics during periods of democratic decline. It also examines constraints on these individuals beyond bars. We chose to cover six geographically representative countries that had notable cases of political imprisonment in recent years and that Freedom in the World classified as electoral democracies within the last two decades but have since lost that status: Nicaragua, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, and Venezuela.

“Political imprisonment” is used in this report as a shorthand for politicized prison sentences, as well as politicized detentions, prosecutions, and investigations against real or perceived government opponents or critics. The term “government opponent” includes critics and those voicing dissent.

In addition to examining trends in political imprisonment, the report explores the concept of “civil death.” Several experts interviewed by Freedom House used the term while discussing conditions in Nicaragua and Turkey. The concept has been applied differently across a variety of contexts in literature and in other reports. These include conditions for government opponents and critics in authoritarian settings, analysis of contemporary and antiquated law that used the term, and discrimination against people with disabilities or certain diseases. In this report, Freedom House focuses on civil death’s use to deprive opponents from participating in society through some combination of restrictive methods. Though not an exhaustive list, we have broadly categorized these methods into four categories: control over travel, physical monitoring, blacklisting, and seizure of assets.

The time periods covered in this report are limited to relatively recent developments: the presidency of Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega since 2007, especially since a 2018 crackdown on antigovernment demonstrations; the presidency of Tanzania’s John Magufuli between 2015 and 2021; the period following Thailand’s 2014 military coup and into the 2020–21 prodemocracy protests; the aftermath of Tunisian president Kaïs Saïed’s suspension of the parliament in 2021; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule over Turkey, especially since the 2013 Gezi Park protests; and the Chávez and Maduro presidencies in Venezuela, particularly after the emergence of mass repression in 2014. Conditions in certain parts of these countries—such as Zanzibar in Tanzania, and southern Thailand—differ significantly from those in the rest of the country; cases from these regions were therefore not included in the analysis.

Between June and August 2023, Freedom House conducted 42 interviews with a range of country experts. They included civil society actors, human rights defenders, journalists, researchers, and academics; several of them have endured political imprisonment and elements of civil death themselves. Interview transcripts were analyzed and annotated between August and October 2023. The contents of the report are based on these interviews, as well as desk research conducted between April and June 2023.

About Free Them All: The Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners

This report was produced under Free Them All: The Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners, which is named in honor of pathbreaking American journalist and former Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt.

Hiatt, who served as the editor of the Washington Post editorial page since 2000, was an outstanding journalist and a tireless advocate for democracy and human rights. Under his leadership, the Post’s editorial and opinion pages became a beacon for the world’s human rights activists and a formidable platform for challenging despots and autocrats globally. Hiatt’s commitment to these causes was not just professional but deeply personal, as evidenced by his relentless campaign to demand accountability for the murder of Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi authorities.

 

Acknowledgements

This report was made possible through the generous support of Peter Brown and Peggy Hamburg, Maureen and Robert Decherd, Julie Farkas and Seth Goldman, Harvey V. Fineberg and Mary E. Wilson, Gideon Foundation, Donald Graham and Amanda Bennett, Hitchcock Hoagland Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Peter Mackler Award, Alfred Moses, and Margaret Shapiro. Freedom House is committed to editorial independence. Our donors do not influence the organization’s research priorities, report findings, or policy recommendations.

Freedom House is solely responsible for this report’s content.

Shannon O’Toole edited the report. Noelle Rojas provided research support. Annie Boyajian, Margaux Ewen, Yana Gorokhovskaia, Katie LaRoque, Nate Schenkkan, and Adrian Shahbaz provided valuable guidance throughout this project.

Finally, none of this would have been possible without the country experts who agreed to speak with us about political imprisonment, other restrictions faced by government opponents and critics, and wider democratic erosion. Their insights were integral to the success of this project.