When I passed my 100th birthday last year, I thought back to those terrible days when millions of people were afraid to speak their minds, and oppressive paranoid governments gripped and strangled whole societies, whole nations, telling people that any criticism of them would bring down the whole structure, create anarchy. How did it change? People all over the world lost their fear. They began to believe in themselves. That Tunisian fruit and veg seller, Mohammed Bouazizi, was one of the first. After that all over the world people realised that life without freedom was no life at all. And when the most powerful country on the planet finally accepted democracy after 70 years of communist rule, dictatorship finally died.
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Emir Ben Ayed/Demotix
Author: Richard Dowden
