Uzbekistan is central Asia's most populous state and strives to assert itself as a regional power.
There was nonetheless a historical irony in watching Ukrainians tearing down Lenin's statues as a sign of their will to break with Soviet domination and assert their national sovereignty.
It is the aggressive attempt to export liberal permissiveness that causes fundamentalism to fight back vehemently and assert itself.
Lukashenko has toed a delicate line over the years, trying to assert his nation's independence of Russia while conscious of the power that Vladimir Putin holds over him.
The organisers of London 2012 frequently assert that this summer's Olympics will leave a legacy for our times to rival the Great Exhibition of 1851 or the Festival of Britain 100 years later.
Sachindra Narayan, a prominent Patna-based social scientist with the National Human Rights Commission in Delhi, said: "The prime reason [for the violence] is that [Dalits] feel empowered after seeing someone from their community at the head of the state and have begun to assert their rights.
The Napoli owner went on to assert that this was "either bad faith or incompetence" from the officials, demanding that all be punished for their errors.
In a further effort to assert their dominance in working-class loyalist districts, the UVF in North Down distributed posters and leaflets at the weekend in Bangor, County Down, with the names of people they accused of drug-dealing in the town.
Employees working in uninspiring jobs may be tempted to enact destructive behaviour as a source of stimulation, whereas individuals stressed out by heavy workloads may perpetrate bullying to cope with frustration or to assert personal control.
Blackwood's stories assert a deeper reality which, like the spectral skater, is always just "a little farther on, a little higher" than humans can grasp.
Clegg was highly critical of the reported Tory plan to risk Britain's expulsion from Europe's human rights watchdog the Council of Europe by drawing up plans to assert the supremacy of parliament over the European court of human rights.
