For the people living in a free and democratic society where they are born and grown up with their human and democratic rights already guaranteed under a strong constitution; story of this kind is hard to conceive. They are as much strangers to a one-man-political-show as to see military and police personnel become involve in politic. Even more strange to them would be watching the country’s judiciary acting as a tool of trade in the hand of a dictator. But that is what the dictatorship is all about. After all the only distinction between the democracy and dictatorship is the 'rule of law' as Hon KITTO J of the High Court of Australia puts it so eloquently in Ziems (1957):
"Without the rule of law, democracy is but a misleading and empty phrase, for the contrast between a democracy and the totalitarian State lies essentially in the reliance, by people wedded to the democratic ideal, upon the law. The substance of democracy is that the State should be subordinate to the needs and welfare of the common individual, and that subordination can only be achieved when the structure of the State ensures that all are bound by a system of law that is defined and ascertainable; which is capable of change in accordance with the wishes of the majority constitutionally expressed; and which is publicly and effectively administered by judicial officers drawn from a profession trained in traditions of impartiality and incorruptibility."
And now when we see positive signs of end to the dictatorship era; a dictator such as Col Ghaddafi of Libya proves the extent of brutality he is prepared to go; hiring foreign mercenaries against his own people. Fortunately civilised world is not going to sit ideal and watches while he butchers his own people. The UN Security Council and the NATO both responded promptly and accordingly. Since his action is not without precedent; his Iranian counterpart, Ali Khamenei has done it before many times; the international bodies should be willing and prepared to act should Ali Khamenei desperately decide to go down the same route. He has imported Lebanese terrorists, from his terrorist group Hezbollah, to suppress Iranian people in many occasions. The very recent one was on 25 Bahman, 14 Feb this year, when he imported 1500 Lebanese terrorists to Iran, reported by the London-based Al Shargh Al Osaat Arabic-English newspaper. He used them in the crackdowns of the Iranian Green’s gathering on the day called by Messrs Mosavi and Karobi. The importation was in addition to those tens of, if not hundreds, Lebanese terrorists who are being trained at the Ghods Forces', a branch of the Islamic Revolution Guards, camps inside Iran at any one time.
While behavior of this kind by these remnants of dictatorship era is a shock to those living in a democratic society; it has been the dictators’ usual business, albeit clandestine, in decades. Tens of thousands of Libyans and Iranians, just in current cases, who dared to politically oppose these dictators' ruling have been tortured and killed in summary executions whom we haven't heard much about in the past decades. Today, however, there is a positive side to all these shocks and horrors. Both the Libyans and Iranians have exposed the brutality of their dictators. They forced the dictators to bring out to the surface what they have been doing in secret for all these years; arresting; torturing; raping; and extra judicial killing of their political opponents in dark places away from our eyes.
Nonetheless the dictatorship era is visibly coming to end. After the former presidents of Tunisia and Egypt, Bin Ali and Mubarak, have given up their power under their people's pressure; it is only a matter of time before Ghaddafi of Libya and Ali Khamenii of Iran have to go too. The only good the killings of Libyans and Iranians is doing for them is to add to their long list of crimes that they have committed against humanity during their years in power.
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