Top 10 Hated People
By Editorial Staff
Contributed by Paul Seaburn, Catalogs.com Top 10 Guru
The word “hate” gets used lightly these days – we hate a rival sports team, we hate an overrated celebrity, we hate pickled pig feet.
We really need to give the word “dislike” more work in these cases and reserve “hate” for people who truly deserve to be hated because of their actions, threats and general nastiness.
While the list changes frequently due to haters eventually eliminating the hated, here are ten of the most hated people in the world and how they earned the dishonor.
10. Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan
As a general in the Sudanese army, Omar al-Bashir led a bloodless coup in 1989 to overthrow Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. Since then, Bashir has been accused of ethnic cleansing by the International Criminal Court resulting in the murder of between 200,000 and 400,000 people in the Darfur region of Sudan and the removal of 2.7 million people from their homes since 2003.
9. Kim Jong-un, Supreme Leader of North Korea
Kim Jong-un comes about his hatred by heredity – he’s the son of Kim Jong-il and the look-alike grandson of Kim Il-sung, both leaders of one of the most repressive regime in the world. He controls the fourth-largest army in the world and has given no indication he will do anything but continue developing nuclear weapons, imprisoning hundreds of thousands of citizens, including children, in labor camps and letting North Koreans starve rather than aid them.
8. Fidel Castro, Former President of Cuba
While he hasn’t been in office since 2008 when his ill health forced him to turn over the job to his brother Raul, Fidel Castro is still hated for his Communist politics, a long list of human rights abuses, his military assistance to other dictatorial regimes and his friendliness to many other hated leaders. Every American president from Eisenhower on has used various means to remove Castro from office and his name is still mentioned in the current presidential race.
7. Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria
Bashar al-Assad is the president of Syria and head of the Syrian faction of the Ba’ath Party, which supports Arab nationalism. Since taking over following the death of his father in 2000, al-Assad’s secret police have tortured, imprisoned and killed his political opponents while suppressing news and Internet access. During the 2011-2012 Arab Spring uprisings, the Syrian army killed thousands of over protesters despite denials by al-Assad.
6. Joaquín Guzmán, Mexican drug lord
Nicknamed “El Chapo” or “Short,” 5-foot-6 Joaquín Guzmán is the head of the world’s largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization, the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico. His brutal tactics have left thousands of civilians, police and politicians dead while he moves tons of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the United States. Guzman also traffics methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin and the U.S. government is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest.
5. Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of al-Qaeda
After the death of Osama bin Laden, his second in command and former physician Ayman al-Zawahiri reportedly took over as leader of al-Qaeda, the organization responsible for the 9/11 attacks in New York and other terrorist acts worldwide. The U.S. government is offering a $25 million reward for information leading to the arrest of al-Zawahiri for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.
4. Felicien Kabuga, responsible for Rwandan genocide
Multimillionaire businessman Felicien Kabuga is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for his role in the massacre of more than 800,000 Rwandan men, women and children in 100 days of terror in 1994. Kabuga is accused of paying for the genocide, inciting violence via his radio stations and supplying machetes used in the killings. Kabuga fled Rwanda and is assumed to be living in Kenya.
3. Islam Karimov, President of Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan’s first and only president since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Islam Karimov’s administration has been accused of torture, kidnapping, murder, rape by the police, financial corruption, religious persecution (particularly Muslims) and an instance when his security forces executed two prisoners by boiling them alive. His nearly-unanimous elections have been questioned and he has ignored the two-term limit on the presidency.
2. Joseph Kony, African guerrilla leader
As the of a guerrilla group called the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony has ordered the killing of civilians in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Sudan. In his attempts to set up theocratic states, Kony’s LRA has displaced 2 million people and abducted 60,000, including 30,000 children, who were forced to fight for him under threats of murder, mutilation, sexual slavery and cannibalism. Uganda’s military has attempted to kill Kony and he is rumored to be living in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
1. Dawood Ibrahim, leader of Indian crime syndicate
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Dawood Ibrahim is the leader of a 5,000-member organized crime syndicate in India called D-Company. Under his leadership, it is responsible for drug smuggling and contract killings in India, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. Ibrahim is suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda, organizing the 1993 Bombay bombings that killed 257 and having involvement with the 2008 Mumbai attacks which killed 164. Ibrahim is believed to be living in Pakistan.