Top Five Least Known and Most Oppresive Leaders

Aug. 24, 2006 — -- There are some leaders whose names have become nearly synonymous with tyranny: Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosovic, just to name three. Yet there are other leaders not as well known who are just as oppressive, if not more, than these notorious leaders.

ABCNEWS.com, in partnership with Human Rights Watch, has composed a list of five of the world's least known, most oppressive heads of state, highlighting their most horrific actions:

Myanmar — Than Shwe

Shwe is overseeing a large-scale ethnic cleansing of minority groups living in his country's border areas. Several hundred thousand people have been sent from their homes -- quite a few have been murdered and raped. More than 1,500 political prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Sui Kyi, have been taken and are often subject to torture.

Equatorial Guinea — Obiang Nguema

Nguema came to power 25 years ago by killing his own father. This happened after he became known as the country's "torturer-in-chief." Equatorial Guinea is a very small African country, but has a lot of oil. Its per capita income puts it near Greece and Portugal in terms of wealth, yet most people live on a dollar a day. Nguema's government, Human Rights Watch says, is stealing most of the money.

Turkmenistan — Saparmurat Niyazov

Niyazov, perhaps the most eccentric leader on the list, engages in what is known as a "cult of personality" -- making his likeness larger than life in every aspect of his country's life. The education system of Turkmenistan is dedicated first and foremost to advocating Niyazov's writing and ideology in the minds of the school children. They are forced to read his "Book of Soul" as if it were a religious text.

Niyazov renamed the months of the year after his relatives and banned opera and ballet because he considered them foreign. But beyond the eccentricity of those kinds of decrees, he has also committed what human rights say are atrocities against his people, such as his order to close down hospitals in every part of the country apart from the capital.