Editorial To Vima: Struggles for freedom

Authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin’s Russia is mobilising 300,000 reservists in order to serve in the Russian Army’s unjust war for the conquest – unsuccessful until now – of Ukraine.

He is simultaneously preparing two referendums in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine in order to lend a semblance of legitimacy to their annexation.

At the same time, he is threatening all of humanity with nuclear war, simply because it is standing by and supporting the Ukrainian people in their struggle to defend their country against the invader.

Putin is already confronted with intense reactions in Russia.

Those who face the threat of mobilisation are either fleeing to third countries or resorting to unorthodox practices in order to avoid being incorporated in the ranks of the Russian army.

Others, who are protesting with loud cries of “Send Putin into the trenches!”, are facing the violence and repression of the regime.

Meanwhile, Europe and the entire world are anxiously observing a failed, writhing Russian leadership that has lost control and is reacting spasmodically.

The threats that emanate from this authoritarian, illiberal, and revisionist leadership are multifarious.

Europe is already being severely tested by the energy crisis and is now also confronted with the inconceivable threat of nuclear disaster, if the Russian president, faced with possible impasses, decides to resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

At the same time, in an even more illiberal corner of the planet, the Middle East – which is critical for peace and security and always volatile – in Iran, women who can no longer endure their country’s authoritarian, theocratic regime, threw off their Islamic headscarves and began a true uprising, with massive street demonstrations in which they are simply demanding that they be allowed to exercise their free will and to choose.

The event that triggered the protests was the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, who was the victim of an atrocious attack by the regime’s morality police because her hair was protruding from her Islamic headscarf.

The demonstrations, with both women and men participating, have extended nationwide.

Protesters are defying the regime’s coercive forces and are not dissuaded from continuing, despite the violence and propaganda of the establishment’s mullahs.

The revolt of these women against the Islamic headscarf signals the end of toleration of an authoritarian regime which, since it swept to power in 1979, never recognised the rights and freedoms of women.

It wants them to be only servants and mothers, and is prepared to stone them if they happen to fall in love or demand freedom of existence and choice.

The sense is that Iran’s theocratic regime is being disputed more generally.

Essentially, it exceeded its limits by stubbornly insisting on maintaining its extreme fundamentalism.

It ignored the common realities of the contemporary world and the expanded capability of contacts and communication between citizens, and thus violated society’s red lines.

Now it is confronted with an identity crisis, and it will not survive if it insists on resorting to violence and coercion.

In the cases of both Russia and Iran, authoritarian leaderships are paying the price of the illiberal policies that they have imposed upon their peoples for a very long time.

Freedom of expression and choice are fundamental rights of societies that are usually not appreciated or imprinted.

Their value is highlighted only when they are lost.

Putin until recently maintained that liberal democracy is passé, that it is supposedly weak, that it cannot offer little to the peoples who choose to adopt it, and that it is in a process of decline.

Nothing could be more untrue. Indeed, we are witnessing the opposite now.

Authoritarian regimes and leaders are collapsing, simply because they act arbitrarily and without transparency and checks on their authority.

The coming months, and perhaps years, will be dominated by such clashes and tensions.

Toleration of and compromises with authoritarian regimes and undemocratic leaderships that are defined by violence and arbitrariness is no longer permissible.