A dissenter is someone who is separated from the common doctrine.
A dissident is someone who dissidents . To dissident, on the other hand, is to separate oneself from a common doctrine , belief or conduct .
The concept is usually used with a political connotation to name the person who decides to separate from the community or party of which he or she was a part. The dissident stops recognizing the legitimacy of the authority to which he had to submit.
One of the most frequent uses of the term appears in totalitarian regimes to refer to those who oppose the prevailing political and social system. Dissidents are often persecuted, censored, imprisoned, tortured and even shot by the authorities.
Cuban dissidents
In Cuba , those who oppose the Socialist Revolution and the regime established in 1959 are considered dissidents. It is impossible to make a precise definition of the notion, since the qualification of dissidence depends on who makes it. For the Cuban government, dissidents are employees of the CIA and other North American organizations, who receive money to carry out the opposition and who represent a danger to society. At the other extreme, many consider Cuban dissidents as defenders of human rights and freedom of expression.
The philologist, journalist and blogger Yoani Sánchez and the psychologist and journalist Guillermo Fariñas Hernández are currently some of the best-known Cuban dissidents in the world.
In Cuba, dissidents are persecuted by the government.
The concept in the Soviet Union and China
Soviet dissidents , on the other hand, were opponents of the regime of the Soviet Union . In general, these were citizens who resorted to non-violent means and who organized different types of protests, despite the fact that many were confined to detention centers and deported.
In China , any movement that calls into question the effectiveness and righteousness of the one-party system is not tolerated; Any dissident who speaks out publicly can pay with harsh punishments, including arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, psychological and physical torture, and harassment. However, it is worth mentioning that this is a country that is struggling to move forward and abandon repression; In recent times, worker strikes, journalistic investigations of acts of corruption and the invocation of human rights in court are increasingly common.
The right of dissidents to resist
The consequences of dissent in certain countries are brutal; But, as in any extreme situation caused by human beings and their misinterpretation of the concept of freedom , heroic acts arise from people who dare to confront the great monsters, putting their lives at risk to solve problems that affect an entire population. , or the whole world.
A concept closely related to political dissidence is the right to resistance , which is recognized for any people who are subjected to a non-democratic government (of illegitimate origin), or to a democracy that has fallen into extreme corruption. and consists of offering him the possibility of overthrowing him and replacing him with a legitimate one, using whatever resources are necessary, even going so far as to use force.
This right to overthrow tyrants can be seen in ancient times , with cases in which their death was caused. Plato covered this phenomenon of tyranny and the right of citizens to demand respect, and there were many authors who followed in his footsteps since then.
Various documents of great importance for humanity have made reference to this right : the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen , one of the pillars of the French Revolution, expressly includes it; On the other hand, the Declaration of Independence of the United States implicitly mentions it when it states that " the people have the right to reform a destructive form of government and to institute a new one based on the principles of the pursuit of happiness, liberty and freedom." life."