It's not like the revolutions that you think. Many many journalists, authors, artists, bloggers, influencers, musicians, teachers, doctors, directos, etc, have been terrored, arrested, tortured, jailed, hangged and executed before.

They've beat a blogger to death. They send murderers to a film maker's house to stab him to shreds!

This sort of things has happened so many times!

The regime responds to violence and nonviolence the same way: if it is a real threat, it meets with the harshest outcome possible, if it is not effective as much, it serves to entertains people buy time for the regime.