Needing permission to travel hands a dangerous tool to authoritarians.
When you don’t like the rules—or rulers—where you live, and trying to change things isn’t worth the time, effort, or danger, one good response is to get the hell out. Find someplace that’s more to your taste by voting for something different with your feet. But what if the local powers-that-be don’t want dissidents to go and limit paths to exit? A new report says that’s exactly what many governments around the world are doing with restrictions on freedom of movement used as tools of political repression.
55 Governments Punish Critics by Restricting Movement
“The governments of at least 55 countries around the world, including India, Nicaragua, and Saudi Arabia, restrict freedom of movement to punish, coerce, or control people whom they view as political threats or opponents,” Freedom House announced last week about a report documenting such controls. “The four main tactics for restricting mobility are revoking citizenship, controlling access to key documents, denying consular services, and imposing travel bans.”
That report, No Way In or Out: Authoritarian Controls on the Freedom of Movement, by Amy Slipowitz, Jessica White, and Yana Gorokhovskaia, points out that travel restrictions often fly below the radar since they can be informally imposed and passed off as bureaucratic inefficiency that just happened to target opponents of the regime. They can also be imposed on those who flee overseas, leaving them stranded, separated from families, and stateless in their places of refuge.
Stripped of Passports
“They can apply to individual dissidents, like the six UK-based Hong Kong prodemocracy activists living in exile who recently had their passports canceled, as well as to…
Registry restrictions aren’t that for off from this.
It is not just collateral registry restrictions, e.g., residency, park, library, etc restrictions, or IML impacts, it is the very adult way today to sentencing (or grounding) one to their room, the corner, or the hallway to think about what they have done much like a child would be by a person in a position of trust (yeah, those in that >95%) where your domicile, city, county, state, or country are your sentencing location whether by the court, another state across the country, or another country across the globe who denies you.
IMO, this where those who are proposing laws and have to defend them in committees and on floors of legislative houses should be challenged to state their legislative intent with their law(s) for the record so they can be challenged with their own language in a court if they are being challenged as unconstitutional.
The land of the free because of the brave? No, the land of those who think they are free when they march in step with what is required by those willing brave who keep the crazy judicial and legislative free to do so with too much outside influence in their thinking and not enough spine (if any) to do what is right.
Sometimes Reason does really good articles, but this one falls short. They’re just parroting data off Freedom House which has an ideological based agenda. Yes, we all know about China and their restrictions, but is Nicaragua & Venezuela also the best that Reason can do? It’s like they’re rehashing the Cold War all over again. I think a much stronger case can be made against Israel’s restrictions on freedom of movement, but that would be too controversial, even for Reason Magazine. Or how about Australia’s international travel ban on their citizens on the registry. At least that’s something we could identify with versus a country like Belarus telling it’s citizens they need to return home to renew their passport.
Real world example?
Technically, I can visit my Father’s home. even though he lives right across the street from Public Park. So long as I remain on his property, I am not “Loitering” within the prohibited proximity of the park. However the moment I set one foot off his property, the countdown clock starts ticking? Not sure if I would be allowed to sleep there, and if so for how long before it become criminal?
Even if I would be allowed to stay at his home, there are all the other landmines scattered around his community that my lack on understanding of TN law could accidentally detonate. He lives in what is, in essence, a retirement community surrounding public parks. As such, there are few places that are not within the proximity prohibition, and no way to get from one to the other without passing through a prohibited area. So the criminality of moving from one “safe zone” to another depends on how fast I walk? If I stay in motion the whole time, I’m not loitering, but am I lurking? Is that also prohibited?
So I guess if he picks me up at the airport, drives me directly to his home, and I stay there like a prisoner, I’ll be ok? Guess it depends on the legal definition of “lurking” as defined by TN Law? If I am “Lurking” is my Father an accessory to this crime by allowing me to “Lurk” on his property? If he continues to provide me with food and/or shelter after the lurking, is he guilty of Ading and Abetting and is that in addition to his accessory charge?
My Father assures me none of this is a problem, because he is personal friends with the elected County Sheriff, who has assured him that none of this will be a problem. This elected official is certain that if he instructs his Deputies to ignore the various violations of State law I may inadvertantly commit, all will be well, because nobody will know. Apparently, nobody dares defy their local Strongman, even in his attempts to hide violations of State Law?
Dad, cannot understand that I don’t want to bet my freedom on his understanding of how corruptly informally the local Law Giver discharges his duties.
I, for some inexplicable reason, feel that a simple visit to my Father home shouldn’t need to be this clandestine nor so wrought with potential legal hazards. Maybe that’s just me? Maybe none of this is a problem, and my lack of comprehensive understanding of the laws I and others like me are uniquely subjected to, as enacted in TN, is in error? Perhaps I should contact a lawyer expert in these laws, just like everybody else does before they visit family in another state?