Asma Jahangir Quotes

By the late 1970s, repression and economic chaos were causing increasing unrest throughout Latin America. Army strongmen were forced to cede power in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

Before the military coup in Chile, we had the idea that military coups happen in Banana Republics, somewhere in Central America. It would never happen in Chile. Chile was such a solid democracy. And when it happened, it had brutal characteristics.

In times of crisis, we should have a period of 6 months of dictatorship to straighten things up, then return to democracy.

When Captain Moussa Dadis Camara came to power, too many thought he would hold to his promise to stand down, introduce democratic elections and restore the rule of law.

Only two countries in this hemisphere are not democratic, but many countries in both Central and South America, and in the Caribbean, are really fragile democracies.

I'm very disappointed by the mature-democracy countries. I was ousted by a coup d'etat.

The army and the government needs a dictator.

If we continue to pardon or excuse the wrongdoers who commit acts of criminality in unsettling an elected government, we don't have any guarantee, do we, that this kind of exercise won't be repeated in the future.

Nigeria first entered...'the dismal tunnel' on January 15, 1966, when the military overthrew all the institutions of a democratically elected government... If there is light at the end of this tunnel, it is imperceptible to anyone not paid to see it.

While the 2011 revolution did not remove the regime, it has shortened the seemingly endless patience that many Egyptians once had for military rule.

The first time I played was in Buenos Aires - was in 1983. The dictatorship was in position.

If one day the military comes to power, it will be through a vote.

The color revolution virus affects only weak countries. Belarus does not have any breeding ground for this.

Democracy is dead in the Maldives.

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine is a good example of how people, who are robbed of their right to vote, can protest and put an end to dictatorship.

The trouble with military rule is that every colonel or general is soon full of ambition. The navy takes over today and the army tomorrow.

Civil liberty and … martial law cannot endure together; the antagonism is irreconcilable; and, in the conflict, one or the other must perish.

A transition from party to personal government has preceded every failure of a republic.

There is no reason for Egypt to be under martial law.

I declare the last election to be illegal …. And I am assuming the presidency.

In a democracy, when you have 20 million people in the street, you resign. Unfortunately, we don’t have a process of recall or impeachment as you have. It was a popular uprising rejecting Mr. Morsi’s continuing in power. Unfortunately, people had to call on the army to intervene. The army had to intervene because short of that, we would have ended up in a civil war.

I’m not going to let the Communists take this government, and they’re doing it right now.

All the calamities we have experienced, and those which are yet to come, are the result of the consolidating tendency of this government; and unless this tendency be arrested, all that has been foretold will certainly befall us,—even to the pouring out of the last vial of wrath, military despotism.

The most blood-boltered coup may result merely in a substitution of interchangeable military cliques.

I visited Libya in September 1996 for the 27th anniversary of the 'revolution' - a military coup that a 27-year-old Gadhafi led to topple the monarchy and since which he has ruled. Some were optimistic that Gadhafi's 'revolution' could herald a new Libya, but it didn't take long for his brutality to stamp out any such hopes.