Sedition in the context of "Incitement"

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is called a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Etymologically, the term capital (lit. 'of the head', derived via the Latin capitalis from caput, "head") refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods.

Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes, capital offences, or capital felonies, and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against a person, such as murder, assassination, mass murder, child murder, aggravated rape, terrorism, aircraft hijacking, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, along with crimes against the state such as attempting to overthrow government, treason, espionage, sedition, and piracy. Also, in some cases, acts of recidivism, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping, in addition to drug trafficking, drug dealing, and drug possession, are capital crimes or enhancements. However, states have also imposed punitive executions, for an expansive range of conduct, for political or religious beliefs and practices, for a status beyond one's control, or without employing any significant due process procedures. Judicial murder is the intentional and premeditated killing of an innocent person by means of capital punishment. For example, the executions following the show trials in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge of 1936–1938 were an instrument of political repression.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe (/mʊˈɡɑːbi/; Shona: [muɡaɓe]; 21 February 1924 – 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as the leader of Zimbabwe from 1980 until he was deposed in a coup in 2017. He served as the first Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from internationally recognised independence in 1980 to 1987, then as the second president of Zimbabwe from 1987 to 2017. He was also the Leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) from 1975 to 1980 and led its successor political party, the ZANU – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF) as its First Secretary, from 1980 to 2017. Ideologically an African nationalist, during the 1970s and 1980s he identified as a Marxist–Leninist, and from the 1990s as a socialist.

Mugabe was born to a poor Shona family in Kutama, then in Southern Rhodesia. Educated at Kutama College and the University of Fort Hare, he worked as a schoolteacher. Angered by white minority rule of his homeland within the British Empire, Mugabe embraced Marxism and joined African nationalists calling for an independent state controlled by the black majority. After making antigovernmental comments, he was convicted of sedition and imprisoned between 1964 and 1974. On release, he fled to Mozambique, established his leadership of ZANU, and oversaw its role in the Rhodesian Bush War, fighting Ian Smith's predominantly white government. He reluctantly participated in peace talks in the United Kingdom that resulted in the Lancaster House Agreement, putting an end to the war. In the 1980 general election, Mugabe led ZANU-PF to victory, becoming prime minister when the country, now renamed Zimbabwe, gained internationally recognised independence later that year. Mugabe's administration expanded healthcare and education and—despite his professed desire for a socialist society—adhered largely to mainstream economic policies.

Religious offenses are actions that are considered to violate religious sensibilities and arouse negative emotions in people with strong religious beliefs. Traditionally, there are three unique types of acts that are considered to be religious offenses:

• Heresy (wrong choice) means questioning or doubting dogmatic established beliefs.
• Blasphemy (evil-speaking) is the act of insulting or showing contempt for a religious deity.
• Apostasy (revolt or renunciation) implies the abandonment of a prescribed religious duty (i.e. disloyalty, sedition or defection)

Individuals in any given religious community may be sensitive to different things in different measures, particularly in relation to topics such as sexuality, infancy, society, and warfare. Religious offense can be caused deliberately or motivated by religious intolerance, especially between specific religious beliefs regarding "sacred truth". However, every religion is essentially a set of beliefs conveyed from generation to generation which are, by religious definition, held to be immutable truths by that religion's believers or followers. Anything that tends to weaken or break that chain of authoritative continuity is likely to be deemed offensive and, in some jurisdictions, severely punishable.

The Proclamation of Rebellion, officially titled A Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition, was the response of King George III to the news of the Battle of Bunker Hill at the outset of the American Revolutionary War. Issued on 23 August 1775, it declared elements of the American colonies in a state of "open and avowed rebellion". It ordered officials of the empire "to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion". The 1775 proclamation of rebellion also encouraged subjects throughout the empire, including those in Britain, to report anyone carrying on "traitorous correspondence" with the rebels to be punished.

Seditious libel is a criminal offence under common law of printing written material with seditious purpose – that is, the purpose of bringing contempt upon a political authority. It is still an offence in Canada but has been abolished in England and Wales, although similar provisions continue to exist under different wording in other statutes.

American scholar Leonard W. Levy argues that seditious libel "has always been an accordion-like concept, expandable or contractible at the whim of judges".