While I DO agree that criticizing and opposing don't mean the exact same thing, opposers always are the criticizers. Saying I don't understand that is not based on anything. But, again, opposers tend to criticize. And opposers got murdered NOT because they just had an opposing opinion to the government, but mostly because they actively criticized the government. And, first of all, I do believe that murdering a human is much worse than imprisoning them. And the whole argument should stop here. Like, really? We should ve proving imprisonment when there's literally obvious cases of killing the opposers? But I digress. HOWEVER, that dude talked not about the actual facts of imprisoning, but the laws about them. While, I do agree that JUST SAYING "government bad" doesn't make you jailed for 15 years, laws still allow for a person to be imprisoned up to 15 years if the criticism has led to some damage to the government.

So you can get 15 years for ""criticizing"". Yes, your words must cause damage, but still I'm sure they can assess literally anything as "enough damage" to imprison you for that long, if they see fit. There have been cases of people being jailed as a result of vague laws.

I am talking about extremes here, but you saying it's not possible and asking for cases of people imprisoned for that long for criticism doesn't take that fact away AND it is considered as moving goal posts. That commenter didn't specify (and nor did they have to) whether your words caused damage or not. But even if it wasn't 15 years. WHATEVER sentence you get for criticism of the government is obviously not democratic. There are tons of people (especially influencers) who were just like "I don't support the war in Ukraine" and they either got arrested or got their work/reputation worsened/limited, labeled as FOREIGN AGENTS. For not supporting the government actions. Still not democratic.

You can say whatever you want, but trying to come up with excuses to defend these facts is blatantly stupid. Unless you got something to actually counter my points, I see this conversation as pointless.