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A few weeks ago,
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somebody tweeted during the midterm elections in the United States
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that Election Day should be made a holiday.
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And I retweeted, saying,
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\"Well, you're welcome to come to my country and vote.
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You'll get the whole week off to allow the military to count it.\"
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I come from Togo, by the way.
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It is a beautiful country located in West Africa.
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There are some cool, interesting facts about my country.
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Togo has been ruled by the same family for 51 years,
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making us the oldest autocracy in Africa.
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That's a record.
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We have a second-coolest record:
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we have been ranked three times as the unhappiest country on earth.
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You are all invited.
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(Laughter)
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So just to let you know,
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it's not very cool to live under an autocracy.
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But the interesting thing is that I have met, throughout the course of my activism,
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so many people from different countries,
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and when I tell them about Togo, their reaction is always,
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\"How can you guys allow the same people to terrorize you for 51 years?
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You know, like, you Togolese, you must be very patient.\"
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That's their diplomatic way of saying \"stupid.\"
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(Laughter)
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And when you live in a free country,
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there's this tendency of assuming that those who are oppressed
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tolerate their oppression or are comfortable with it,
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and democracy is projected as a progressive form of governance
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in such a way that those people who don't live under democratic countries
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are seen as people who are not intellectually or maybe morally
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as advanced as others.
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But it's not the case.
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The reason why people have that perception
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has to do with the way stories are covered about dictatorships.
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In the course of my activism,
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I have had to interview with so many news outlets out there,
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and usually it would always start with, \"What got you started?
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What inspired you?\"
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And I reply, \"I wasn't inspired. I was triggered.\"
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And it goes on. \"Well, what triggered you?\"
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And I go on about how my father was arrested when I was 13, and tortured,
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all the history ... I don't want to get into details now,
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because you'll start sleeping.
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But the thing is, at the end of the day, what interests them the most is:
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How was he tortured?
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For how many days? How many people died?
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They are interested in the abuse, in the killing,
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because they believe that will gain attention and sympathy.
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But in reality, it serves the purpose of the dictator.
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It helps them advertise their cruelty.
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In 2011, I cofounded a movement I call \"Faure Must Go,\"
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because Faure is the first name of our president.
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Togo is a French-speaking country, by the way,
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but I chose English because I had my issues with France as well.
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But then --
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(Laughter)
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But then, when I started Faure Must Go,
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I made a video, and I came on camera,
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and I said, \"Well, Faure Gnassingbé, I give you 60 days to resign as president,
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because if you don't,
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we the youth in Togo will organize and we will bring you down,
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because you have killed over 500 of our countrymen
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to seize power when your father died.
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We have not chosen you.
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You are an imposter, and we will remove you.\"
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But I was the only known face of the movement.
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Why? Because I was the only stupid one.
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(Laughter)
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And the backlashes followed.
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My family started receiving threats.
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My siblings called me one morning.
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They said, \"You know what?
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When they come here to kill you, we don't want to die with you,
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so move out.\"
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So yes, I moved out.
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And I'm so angry at them, so I haven't talked to them in five years.
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Anyway, moving forward ...
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For the past nine years, I have been working with countries
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to raise awareness of Togo,
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to help the people of Togo overcome their fear
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so they, too, can come and say they want change.
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I have received a lot of persecution
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that I cannot disclose,
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a lot of threats, a lot of abuse,
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psychologically.
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But I don't like talking about them,
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because I know that my job as an activist is to mobilize,
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is to organize,
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is to help every single Togolese citizen understand that, as citizens,
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we hold the power,
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we are the boss and we decide.
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And the punishment that the dictators are using to intimidate them
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must not prevent us from getting what we want.
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That is why I said it is very important to cover the stories of activists
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in the way that it helps mobilize people,
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not in the way that it helps deter their action
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and force even more their subjugation to the oppressive system.
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During these years that I've been an activist,
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there are days that I felt like quitting because I couldn't take it.
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Well then, what kept me going?
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The one thing that kept me going:
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I remember the story of my grandfather,
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and how he used to walk 465 miles from his village to the city,
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just to protest for independence.
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Then I remember the sacrifice of my father,
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who was tortured so many times
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for daring to protest against the regime.
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Back in the '70s, they would write pamphlets
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to raise awareness on the dictatorship,
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and because they couldn't afford to make copies,
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they would reproduce the same pamphlet 500 times each
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and distribute them.
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It got to a point where the military knew their handwriting,
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so as soon as they stumbled upon one, they'd go and get them.
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But I look at that and I'm like, you know, today you have a blog.
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I don't have to copy the same thing 500 times.
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I blog and thousands of people read it.
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By the way, in Togo, they like calling me the WhatsApp girl,
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because I am always on WhatsApp attacking the government.
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(Laughter)
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So it's much easier.
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When I'm angry at the government, I just make an angry note,
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and I send it out and thousands of people share it.
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I'm rarely this composed. I'm always angry, by the way.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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So I was talking about the necessity to showcase our stories,
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because when I think about the sacrifices that were made for us,
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it helped me keep going.
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One of the very first actions of our Faure Must Go movement
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was to come up with a petition, asking citizens to sign
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so that we can demand new elections, as the constitution allows.
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People were scared to put their names
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because, they said, they don't want to get in trouble.
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Even in the diaspora, people were scared.
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They were like, \"We have family at home.\"
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But there was this woman who was in her 60s.
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When she heard about it, she took the petition,
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and she went home,
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and by herself she collected over 1,000 [signatures].
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That inspired me so much, and I was like,
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if a 60-year-old that has nothing more to gain in this regime
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can do this for us, the young ones,
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then why should I quit?
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It is the stories of resistance, the stories of defiance,
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the stories of resilience,
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that inspire people to get involved,
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not the stories of abuse and killings and hurt,
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because as humans, it's only natural for us to be scared.
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I would like to share with you a few characteristics of dictatorships
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so that you can assess your own country
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and see if you are also at risk of joining us.
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(Laughter and cheers)
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(Applause)
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Number one thing to look at: concentration of power.
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Is the power in your country concentrated in the hands of a few, an elite?
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It can be a political elite, ideological elite.
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And you have a strongman,
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because we always have one guy who is presented as the messiah
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who will save us from the world.
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The second point is propaganda.
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Dictators feed on propaganda.
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They like giving the impression that they are the saviors,
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and without them, the country will fall apart.
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And they are always fighting some foreign forces, you know?
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The Christians, the Jewish, the Muslims,
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the voodoo priests are coming for you.
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The Communists, when they get here, we'll all be broke.
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These kinds of things.
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And our president, in particular, he fights pirates.
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(Laughter)
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I am very serious.
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Last year, he bought a boat that's 13 million dollars to fight pirates,
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and 60 percent of our people are starving.
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So they are always protecting us from some foreign forces.
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And this leads to point three: militarization.
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Dictators survive by instigating fear,
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and they use the military to suppress dissident voices,
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even though they try to give the impression
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that the military is to protect the nation.
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And they suppress institutions and destroy them
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so that they don't have to be held accountable.
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So do you have a heavily militarized country?
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And this leads to point four, what I call human cruelty.
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You know when we talk about animals,
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we say animal cruelty when animals are abused,
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because there's no charter acknowledged by the UN
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saying animal rights charter.
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Point one: all animals are created equal. So you don't have that.
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So whenever animals are abused, we say animal cruelty.
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But when it comes to humans, we say human rights abuses,
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because we assume that all humans have rights.
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But some of us are actually still fighting for our right to have rights.
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So in that condition, I don't talk about human rights abuse or violation.
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When you live in a country and you have an issue with the president
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and the worst thing that can happen is he bans you from the presidency,
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you are lucky.
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When you come to my country and have an issue with the president,
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you just run, disappear; you vanish from the universe,
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because they can still find you in Turkey.
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So people like myself, we don't get to live in Togo anymore.
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And people like myself,
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we don't get to live in the same place for more than a month,
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because we don't want to be traced.
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The way they abuse people,
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the type of cruelty that happens in all impunity under dictatorships
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are beyond human imagination.
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The stories of some of the activists that were killed,
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their bodies dumped in the sea,
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that were tortured
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to the point where they lost their hearing or their sight --
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those stories still haunt me.
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And sometimes, as an activist,
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I am less concerned about dying than how it will happen.
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Sometimes I just sit down and I imagine all scenarios.
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What are they going to do? Are they going to cut my ears first?
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Or are they going to cut my tongue because I'm always insulting them?
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It sounds cruel, but it is the reality.
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We live in a very cruel world.
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Dictators are cruel monsters,
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and I am not saying it to be nice.
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So yes, that is the final characteristic.
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The list goes on,
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but that's the final thing that I want to share about autocracies,
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so that you look at your country and see if there are risks there.
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It is important that you acknowledge the gains of freedom that you have today,
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because some people had to give their lives for you to have it.
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So don't take this for granted.
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But then at the same time, you also need to know
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that no country is actually destined to be oppressed,
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while at the same time,
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no country or no people are immune to oppression and dictatorship.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)