Belarussian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko is often referred to as "Europe's Last Dictator." According to the U.S. State Department, he has manipulated the constitution to extend his term in office, the judiciary is an arm of his regime, and the government restricts freedom of the press. Journalists are imprisoned and political opponents are attacked for expressing opposition viewpoints.

Than Shwe, dictator of Burma and leader of the country's authoritarian military junta, seized power in 1988 after military forces killed 3,000 pro-democracy student demonstrators. Shwe is an unassuming dictator in some senses; his countrymen know little about him and he is not an obviously visible presence throughout the country. He rules by decree, which his junta and military forces carry out, but maintains a low profile.

Chinese President Hu Jintao took office in March 2003 as the hand picked candidate of Jiang Zemin, replacing President Deng Xiaoping. As the anointed leader of the fourth generation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hu was compared to Mikhail Gorbachev for his reformist platforms. However, unlike Gorbachev, Hu has done relatively little to improve life for Chinese citizens. Censorship of the media, imprisonment of dissidents, monitoring of internet activity and executing dissenters are all tactics Hu's government uses to control citizens' access to information. According to the U.S. State Department Report on Human Rights Practices for 2002, the government Hu inherited from his predecessor had a poor human rights record that made only superficial attempts to improve its image.

In Cuba extreme censorship is real. It is not just a marketing moniker so freely applied to corn chips, soda and SUVs. In Cuba, the government doesn't just control the public's access to media or the content of media, they outlaw any media that is not controlled by the government, with the exception of a few publications by Catholic dioceses in Cuba that offer only the most hesitant and indirect criticism of the Castro regime. In their efforts to control the media they have even gone so far as to confiscate pens and paper from "dissident" journalists.

As the world commemorates the second anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks and the search for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden continues, a lesser-known terrorist network in Southeast Asia is waging a murderous campaign for an Islamic state. Jemaah Islamiyah, recently in the headlines after one of its members was sentenced to death on September 9, 2003 for the bombing of a Bali nightclub, is a fundamentalist group that operates in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and potentially the Philippines and Thailand. Founded in the 1970s, the group advocates the creation of a theocratic Islamic state that would encompass most of Southeast Asia. It is determined to terrorize the governments and citizens of Southeast Asia until it achieves its goal and to date is responsible for at least 4 major attacks since 2000. JI's exact membership numbers are unknown, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir is an extremist organization that has declared jihad against the United States, and is dedicated to overthrowing governments around the world, replacing them with a Caliphate based on Islamic law.  According to Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, the organization is “totalitarian…akin to a disciplined Marxist-Leninist party, in which internal dissent is neither encouraged nor tolerated.”  New members undergo a two-year indoctrination program, where they learn the party rhetoric and are mentored by a senior party member, before they can begin recruiting on their own.  Operating in 40 countries throughout the world, the group’s hold is particularly strong in Central Asia, due to the region’s instability and secular authoritarian leadership, according to the Heritage Foundation.  The group is not a terrorist organization, and does not explicitly advocate violence in its teachings.  However, experts worry that the poverty and forced secularization in Central Asia, coupled with the authoritarian regimes in power, the methods Hizb-ut-Tahrir uses could change.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il rules uncontested, uncontrolled and without mercy. Since 1994, when he took command of the country from his father, Kim Il Sung, the details of his life have been closely guarded, and in some cases made up by the communist propaganda machine he controls. Born in Siberia in 1941, official government documents publicize his birth as occurring in 1942, atop Mt. Paiktu, where his father had a guerilla base, while a double rainbow and shining star graced the sky. According to the BBC, the "dear leader" makes few public appearances and it is believed that before his June 2000 trip to Beijing, he had not left North Korea since sometime in the 1980s. His interests are varied and somewhat surprising for a homicidal dictator; he is rumored to have written six operas in 2 years, and it is believed he personally designed the Juche tower located in Pyongyang and dedicated to his father's philosophy. The perception of Kim in some circles is that of a playboy who wears lifts in his shoes to compensate for his lack of height. Once known as a drinker, health problems have forced him to give up liquor and rumors of his guards kidnapping Japanese women to serve as his companions on luxury vacations fuel speculation he is a womanizer. Most importantly though, Kim is a dictator who has knowingly allowed or ordered the deaths of thousands of citizens, remains a suspect in the 1983 Rangoon bombing that killed South Korean Cabinet Ministers and is a suspect in the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airline. His nuclear weapons program is a source of widespread international concern, and the gulags or "education through labor" camps have caused the deaths of thousands, torn apart families, and ruined countless lives.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) is a communist dictatorship led by Korean Worker's Party Secretary Kim Jong Il. Kim is the son of eternal President Kim Il Sung, the first leader of North Korea and author of the country's original Constitution, who died in 1994. The North Korean Constitution emphasizes the idea of the " a nationalist ideology based on self-reliance, while unabashedly glorifying its author. Economic activity is centrally planned and all labor unions are government controlled. Individual freedoms are virtually non-existent and all interests are subservient to Kim and the party he controls. The government has no real system of checks and balances, and the legal system is based on German, Japanese and Communist systems without any framework in place for judicial review, reports the CIA World Factbook.