The Peninsula Newspaper
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
The end of 2011 was not fair, while the change in the Arab world was almost semi-radical affecting some leaders and changed the repressive dictatorial and totalitarian regimes which transferred the power to their children, family and their respective communities for decades and hoped to remain in power for centuries. But that change was kind on the other side of the globe, especially in Asia such as China, South Korea and South Africa where things did not change much and perhaps the year 2012 will surprise us with its events and variables.
(1) The worship of each of dictators, tyrants, eternal rulers, sultan, eternal leader, political, military and religious leaders, imams, and the guardianship of jurist was the phenomenon which was not exclusive to Arabs after they got rid of the worship of idols, but many of the peoples over the historical times in different places and times participate in it, while many of them got rid of it.
This phenomenon still lives in the hearts and minds in most parts of the Arab and Islamic world as in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Many still live under the feet of these leaders even after their departure or escape or death even they had stolen their money and rights, violated their sanctities and walked on their bodies. One of the most severe psychological crises that has been encountered and treated by the trauma through intensive doses of freedom and individual and social responsibility, was laying in the face of nostalgia of slaves to return to slavery “His Eminence” and the system of the former king after the approval of the law preventing slave and the abolition of slavery in the United States. It is the time experienced by the Arab people nowadays after the explosion of revolts in the cities and Arab streets.
(2) 2011 refused to pass satisfied by the overthrow of some Arab leaders, but took North Korean leader Kim Jong-il ,one of the most authoritarian leaders and dictators. We saw hundreds of thousands coming out in Pyongyang in grief perhaps, or in joy of his departure. We must not be misled by the manifestations as have learned a lot about the psychology of the masses and the falsity of the demonstrations of millions who hailed the spirit of the commander, his accomplishments, creations and getting (99. 99%) of the popular vote in favour to continue in the power till the end of life.
We saw such phenomenon in case of Ben Ali of Tunisia, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Libya’s Gaddafi, Yemen’s Saleh, Syria’s Bashar. The official newspapers and trumpets came out glorifying the life of the Korean leader, which was full of extraordinary achievements, while the blue lights appeared and the bird of white crane toured clearing the snow from the shoulders of leader’s statue. The official media spoke about the influx of five million people, at least to visit the statues and pictures of late leader in different parts of Pyongyang to express their grief. There are tens of thousands of North Koreans who are waiting in the queue until access to the groups in which hundreds of people are mourning. All of this takes place under the overwhelming artificial lights. They have been surrounded by bitterly cold winds, funeral music and the grieving sounds that are coming from the amplifiers, while every minute is being documented with the participation of about twenty photographers and ten teams of television cameras.
(3) The truth is different from the fake official date. The respected commander Kim Jong-il, who died at 69 years, ruled North Korea with an iron fist since 1994, leaving his youngest son Kim Jong-un as his successor, the little dictator who has not reached the age of thirty of the political adolescence in a country that has seen deadly famine and frequent shortages of food. Jong-il was widely criticized during his reign due to the occurrence of “gross violations of human rights in addition to threat of the entire region security due to Pyongyang’s nuclear programme. The commander of North Korea used the propaganda and exaggeration in the worship of the person, the loyalty of the absolute army to him and labour camps to stay in power as his father did before him. He looked with the irony at those who predicted the collapse of his regime with the demise of the Soviet help at the beginning of the nineties of the last century. By the end of the decade the famine in North Korea resulted in the deaths of up to one million people. However, he continued with this and continued his program to build nuclear weapons, and conducted two experiments in this context. He was accused of organizing an attack that killed 17 South Koreans in 1983 in Burma, of masterminding the explosion in 1987 on a Korean Airlines, which killed 115 people on board, few months before the Seoul Olympic Games. The more disturbing during the last years of his reign was his unbalanced crazy decisions, as the same happened at his army’s launch of a torpedo in 2010 to chase one South Korean, which killed 46 of his sailors and cost the additional sanctions.
(4) With the continuation of authoritarian regimes in power, failures, setbacks and defeats are turned into achievements and victories. Behind the buildings which seem to be beautiful, elegant, clean and overlooking the streets through which the convoy of leader is passing, there is poverty, destitution, famine, prisons, detention centers, secret services, police and thugs who shoot at anyone wishing to speak with the word “freedom”.
The Syrian revolution which is today calling for the overthrow of the killer Baathist regime is the closest prophecies that might be achieved in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) if the country continued to be marginalized and neglected, and living far from the era under the rule of a repressive dictatorial regime. In 2011 we saw revolutions in the Arab world and it is a history that invites us to re-write history, which was dominated by historians of the regime and apprentices.
Are we going to see a similar spring to overthrow dictatorial regimes in different parts of the world and see what pleasant or unpleasant surprises this year will bring to us?
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