The quality of life

Last week I was reading a book in a part of which, an example was given of Nicolae Ceau ̧sescu, the dictator of Romania between 1966 to 1989. It said when the dictator came to power, he banned abortion. In those years abortion was the main form of preventing the birth of unwanted children. In a year after that the birth rate was doubled. He wanted to strengthen his power by increasing the population. Most people were suffering from poverty in his country. They felt miserable. He forced women to get pregnant; otherwise he had agents called ‘Menstrual Police’ who regularly went to women's workplace and asked them for pregnancy tests. If a woman repeatedly failed to show positive in her test, she had to pay a fine called ‘celibacy tax’. When the riots happened in 1989 in the streets of Timisoara, the fact was revealed. Most of the exasperate protesters were the youth. At least a noticeable part of them were those that were supposed to strengthen the government. He could not resist the riots and uprising of his people and tried to escape the country with his wife. People captured them and they were executed by a firing squad.

The story of Ceau,sescu awakened my memories. Actually he was visiting my country, when the streets of Timisoara were filled by those young protesters. Nobody could guess that he and his wife would get executed when they got back. It was quite shocking. In fact most of the revolutions happen so quickly, but the dictators never learn. They do not think similar stories would happen to them as well.