&gt;It&#x27;s not, because killing people marching for their rights can be used by the protesters (martyrs) or by the West (to condemn said regimes).<p>This makes sense but doesn&#x27;t hold against the reality of life. For several reasons:<p>1 - There are places where people have been killing each other for so long, it wouldn&#x27;t even make it to the news and wouldn&#x27;t shock anyone if it did. Who got shocked a few days ago when the Freedom and Democracy Front has overthrown General Babangida causing <i>FOUR THOUSAND</i> deaths in yet another ethnic cleansing disguised as a coup&#x2F;revolt for &quot;Democracy&quot; in a country that has had one too many of those, considering that the guy gained power in a blood bath in the first place. Who has even heard of that news? Did CNN even bother?<p>I bet no one because I just invented the Freedom and Democracy Front and General Babangida.  But I also bet many actually didn&#x27;t even doubt the information because it seems so plausible. After all, they all call themselves &quot;Freedom and Democracy&quot;, there&#x27;s always a General, who became President in a coup himself. I just Googled &quot;African last names&quot; to make it real.<p>You can put that imaginary news in any scene of any movie of the last 40 years, and it would still pass unnoticed. There&#x27;s so much wrong in the fact that all of this has become cliché, it&#x27;s not even funny.<p>2 - Condemnation or any reaction from the &quot;West&quot;, or any country for that matter, is not an idealized object in an isolated system that somehow manifests itself <i>whenever</i> and <i>wherever</i> injustice has stricken. It is just an instrument of statecraft. The same action done by the same State at different times would trigger different reactions based on the status of said state and the interest of the &quot;Condemnators&quot;.<p>A State would make a big deal out of an adversary State repressing riots and make it look like a Human Rights issue; at the same time it would make its own repression of riots a Security issue. It would not even comment on an ally State executing people for abusive reasons, certainly not when that State is its ally against an enemy State. That is, until now, which certainly marks the transition and the turning wheel.. The disgrace of an ally and burying the hatch with an enemy state.<p>Condemnation is very akin to <i>slut shaming</i>. States get all ramped up when they&#x27;re spied on and act outraged, yet they spy on other States. Intelligence Officers call their assets in other countries &quot;brave patriots risking their lives to improve their countries by fighting against their abusive regimes&quot;, yet use the term &quot;traitor&quot; for people of their own country who do the same.