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January brought new hope to freedom fighters around the world as the United States extracted Nicolás Maduro to face justice for his crimes against humanity and Iranian protestors organized to directly challenge the tyrannical regime in Tehran after 46 years of repression. However, while both the Iranian and Venezuelan people continue to fight hard for their freedom, February’s events have tempered the excitement of democracy activists around the world.
On Monday, a Hong Kong court sentenced 78-year-old newspaperman Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison under China’s repressive national security law. Lai’s crime was the wild success of his independent newspaper, Apple Daily, which regularly supported the democracy movement in Hong Kong and became one of the city’s most popular newspapers. His conviction continues the trend of the Chinese Communist Party silencing its critics out of fear that precisely those values that first inspired the creation of the United States – freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom of the press – would lead to the eventual toppling of their regime.
Likewise, after mealy-mouthed pledges of political prisoner releases and amnesty for exiled political leaders, the Venezuelan regime claimed to have released some of Venezuela’s best-known political prisoners. Among those released on Sunday were Juan Pablo Guanipa, former Vice President of the National Assembly, who was arrested in 2025. His crime? Opposing the Maduro regime, which was labeled as conspiracy to commit terrorism.
While this would normally be cause for celebration, within hours Guanipa was surrounded by armed men and kidnapped. Thanks to extensive public attention and outcry, he has since been returned home though remains under house arrest. At the time, the regime said what we all knew – that they were behind the kidnapping, inventing the false pretext that he had violated “strict compliance with the obligations imposed on him.” The real reason? Guanipa has real gravitas and force. His name is recognized throughout the country. And like the CCP, the Venezuelan regime fears what he can accomplish against it.
The CCP and Venezuelan regime are right to be scared. People like Juan Pablo Guanipa and Jimmy Lai are indeed threats to their power, just as all activists for freedom of speech, press, and religion are threats to authoritarian regimes. Such regimes can only exist if their people are controlled, but the courage exemplified by men and women like Jimmy Lai, Juan Pablo Guanipa, and Maria Corina Machado proves this control has limits and can be challenged.
For those of us on the outside, sharing these stories and championing their causes is an important way we can help the light of freedom to break through the cracks of these regimes. The Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky famously told the story of how he and his fellow political prisoners heard of President Reagan’s forceful denouncement of the Soviet Union as “an evil empire,” and it gave them hope and inspiration because they realized they were not forgotten or ignored. Today, freedom fighters like Lai, Guanipa, and hundreds of thousands of brave Iranians likewise need to know that we stand with them now. There is nothing more threatening to authoritarianism than freedom, because there is nothing more promising for human flourishing than freedom.
-Carrie Filipetti, Executive Director of the Vandenberg Coalition
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