Defector
From Free net encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Defector (disambiguation).
A defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one political entity in exchange for allegiance to another.
This act is usually in a manner which violates the laws of the nation or political entity from which the person is seeking to depart, as opposed to a change of citizenship, which does not typically defy the law of any nation.
During the Cold War, the many people escaping across the Berlin Wall to flee from communist East Germany to the West were called defectors. During the Vietnam War, many Army of the Republic of Vietnam forces defected to the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam, and some U.S. soldiers fragged their officers in protest of the war. One example of a defector is Edward Lee Howard.
The term has been widely used by the media in the United States to denote immigrants from Fidel Castro's Cuba; however, some conservatives object to this characterization, pointing out that the American press never referred to those who left Germany during the Third Reich era as "defectors."
In some cases, defectors remain in the country or with the political entity they are against, functioning as an agent or a double agent. This is a common device in many thriller and spy novels, including those of Tom Clancy, especially The Hunt for Red October, Red Rabbit and The Cardinal of the Kremlin.