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We just usually read Parade magazine for Howard Huge cartoons and “Ask Marilyn,” but the magazine actually keeps a somewhat frequently updated list of the world’s worst dictators. For the first time this year, Raúl Castro and Hugo Chávez made the top ten list.
Granted, a number of dictators who made the last edition of the list are no longer alive, let alone in power. Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il (whom the magazine was set to name number one before his sudden death) both died this year. Burma’s Than Shwe resigned.
As a result, Cuba’s Raúl Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez have now risen into the top ten.
Castro comes in at number seven, with the magazine noting, “selectively-enforced prohibition on the unauthorized assembly of more than three people, which is punishable with up to three months in prison and a fine, and a “dangerousness” provision that allows the government to imprison people who seem like they might commit a crime in the future.”
Meanwhile, the ailing Chavez comes in at ninth. The magazine declares that he’s “squelched freedom of the press, persecuted members of the political opposition by arresting and jailing them, stripped power from once-autonomous universities, and turned the independent judiciary into an instrument to hand down heavy sentences to political opponents.
No other leaders in the West make the list. In the wake of Kim Jung-il’s death, Eritrea’s Isaias Afewerki was named to the number one spot.
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