Yulia Tymoshenko Quotes

On one occasion in 1987 the security police came looking for me because of a drawing that I'd published.

I'm a political detainee and will be a political prisoner …. I myself have in a certain sense asked for this detention and this sentence, because I've always refused to change my opinion, for which I would be willing to give my life and not just remain in prison.

You look around the world in 2013, and you say, 'How many prime ministers or presidents are in prison?' One or two. 'How many generals or bankers?' Two or three. 'But how many writers?' 850 or so.

If a British government experienced such a long and persistent resistance to domestic policy in England, then that policy would almost certainly be changed... We have asserted that we are political prisoners, and everything about out country - our arrests, interrogations, trials, and prison conditions - show that we are politically motivated.

In Vietnam we have no political prisoners. No one is arrested or jailed for his or her speech or point of view. They are put in jail because they violated the law.

Despite all the gains for democracy in the world, in many countries anyone who wants to publish truths unwelcome to the government risks suppression and criminal punishment.

Bhutto's regime is remembered for having one of the worst human rights records in Pakistan's history, and her government did not allow the media freedoms she criticizes Musharraf for crushing.

The old bastions of the post-communist regime collapsed before my very eyes. The monsters who had kept Ukraine in a criminal state left the stage.

The raids on Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, the Adenauer Foundation, and other groups helping Egyptians move toward respect for democratic politics and human rights were of a piece with the practices of Hosni Mubarak - only bolder and more repressive.

In Singapore, Malcolm X type of activity would be extremely difficult because the government can be very harsh on lawbreakers.

Yanukovych has changed everything in Ukrainian jails - real criminals have been released, while representatives of the middle class and politically rebellious free-minded people have filled the prisons.

The real political life in Russia unfortunately is not in the parliament but on the streets and in the media.

Also, when you escape a Communist regime, you treasure liberty and you understand that as government and state expand, liberty must contract.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

I was forced to come into politics because Saakashvili had destroyed the opposition. I had a choice either to leave the country, because it was dangerous to live here, or to go into politics.

There are no 'political prisoners' as such in Bahrain. People are not arrested because they express their views, we only have criminals.

When men are arrested without any legal basis and for political reasons, it's merely a routine, everyday occurrence in Russia, and hardly anyone has any sympathy.

My homeland of Belarus is an unlikely place for an Internet revolution. The country, controlled by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, was once described by Condoleezza Rice as 'the last outpost of tyranny in Europe.'

The words we spoke and our entire punk performance aimed to express our disapproval of a specific political event: the patriarchs' support of Vladimir Putin, who has taken an authoritarian and anti-feminist course.

Open your newspaper - any day of the week - and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government.

Intermediary liability enables the Chinese authorities to minimize the number of people they need to put in jail in order to stay in power and to maximize their control over what the Chinese people know and don't know.

Consider my Situation: I was a forty nine year old man facing life in prison for encouraging people to face up to new options with courage and intelligence. The American government was being run by Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Robert Haldeman, G. Gordon Liddy, J. Edgar Hoover and other cynical flouters of the democratic process

Fidel Castro has killed more people than we even know …. Fidel Castro uses medicine and food to suppress his people.

Political or religious dissenters are the plague of every totalitarian regime.

There are no political prisoners, only imprisoned politicians.