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Definition
someone who publicly opposes established policy- The Chinese keep tight control of the Internet to assure it cannot be used to spread the opinions of dissidents.
- Prior to his fame, Soviet dissident, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, was arrested for criticizing Stalin in private correspondence with a friend. He was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp.
- Chinese dissident, Harry Wu, says he was beaten, tortured and nearly starved to death for protesting official policy.
- To the extent that we want to address such issues as the treatment of political dissidents and the protection of intellectual property rights, those matters should be handled through diplomatic channels.Cato Handbook for Congress: Dealing with a Resurgent China -- http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-48.html (retrieved 06/28/06)
- Most dissidents now are executed, or held under conditions that make them wish for execution.Barbara Kingsolver -- The Poisonwood Bible
- He didn't know half the people she talked about — dissidents and philosophers and leaders-in-exile.Dave Eggers -- A Hologram for the King
- But Kennedy would go on to become a self-described "dissident at large," writing numberless articles and several books that railed against bigotry.Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner -- Freakonomics
- I have never allowed this furious dissident the courtesy of my full attention.Pat Conroy -- The Lords of Discipline
- Getting ten or twelve dissidents together is a whole lot easier than assembling a hundred.Tom Clancy -- The Hunt for Red October
- In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.Nelson Mandela -- Long Walk to Freedom
- If he was leading this band of dissidents, which direction would he lead them?Ted Dekker -- White: The Great Pursuit
- He gave a speech in 1936 stating that the executions were the only way to rid the Soviet Union of the dissidents striving to undermine its grand success.Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy
- The nineteen men from Brazzaville were stashed, along with other Kabila rivals and political dissidents, into a high-security section of Makala called Pavilion One.Warren St. John -- Outcasts United
- When I was six, in the streets of Shanghai, near the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, I watched a parade of trucks carrying political dissidents on their way to be publicly executed.Jay Allison, et al. -- This I Believe II
- I believe that it is only through empathy that the pain experienced by an Algerian woman, a North Korean dissident, a Rwandan child, or an Iraqi prisoner becomes real to me and not just passing news.Jay Allison, et al. -- This I Believe
- When a prominent dissident was arrested in China, we would write a front-page article; when 100,000 girls were routinely kidnapped and trafficked into brothels, we didn't even consider it news.Nicholas D. Kristof -- Half the Sky
- He was crossing the wide green lawn, passing the new sculpture by that Chinese dissident—she remembered she should highlight it soon, maybe even today—and just then he turned briefly, as if checking to see if Mae was still following.Dave Eggers -- The Circle
- It was in 1986, not long after Baby Doc left Haiti, an event that marked the end of the Duvaliers' reign, which was being followed by what dissident Haitians called Duvalierism without Duvalier, with the Haitian army generally taking on the dictatorial role.Tracy Kidder -- Mountains Beyond Mountains
- Jack had seen Denker the teacher as not much different from the strutting South American little Caesars in their banana kingdoms, standing dissidents up against the wall of the handiest squash or handball court, a super-zealot in a comparatively small puddle, a man whose every whim becomes a crusade.Stephen King -- The Shining
- Ruefully, because the henchman, a likable schemer named Ercole, is secretly involved with dissident elements in the court of Faggio who want to keep Niccolo alive, and so he contrives to stuff a young goat into the cannon instead, meanwhile smuggling Niccolo out of the ducal palace disguised as an elderly procuress.Thomas Pynchon -- The Crying of Lot 49