It's true. Security agents are actually threatening people with the death penalty merely for protesting against the president. Here is a direct quote regarding this policy
"For those who take the risk of going out into the street and try to destabilise the situation, their actions will be qualified as terrorism."
It was then explained that the penalty for that is of couse death.
OK, so this isn't actually happening in the United States. This is ocurring in
Belarus. The statements were made by Stepan Sukhorenko who is the head of Belarus' KGB. I suppose this should make us happy that we aren't that far gone yet. That we at least won't get the death penalty for protesting. I feel that we have already started down a similar path though.
Do you disagree with Bush's handling of the war on terror? Well then, you know that those terrorists see your dissent and are emboldened by it. It's because of you speaking out against the Iraq War, against wiretaps, against holding people indefinately without charging them, against torture, against secret torture facilites, that those terrorists haven't been beaten yet. At least that's what we are told by republicans and even white house officials.
So we see how we are similar to Belarus in that dissenters are branded terrorists or terrorist enablers. Here in the United States, there are restrictions on protesting. The first amendment guarantees the freedom of assembly. However that doesn't mean anything these days. In order to protest the government you have to get permission from the government in the form of a permit. "Um, excuse me government officials, may I please have a permit so I can protest?" "who are you protesting?" "you" "I'm sorry but your protest would be unsafe, request denied" As you can see, our once great country has been reduced to a mockery of what it once was. Although we have free speech at the moment, how far is it from having that restricted when government officials accuse dissenters of aiding terrorists simply by exercising their rights? What right of assembly do we have if we want to protest our corrupt government but we have to go to a government organization for permission to gather together? And when they do get permission they are restricted to "free speech zones". When you think about it, we really aren't all that far from being Belarus. It saddens me greatly to see what has happened to the first amendment in this country.