Mr. Chair, my colleague mentioned earlier that there was a culture of intimidation in some of the old style Soviet regimes.
I have to relate a story about the 2004 failed election that I was at where there was president-elect Yanukovych, the same person, and the supporting regime to support his election and to maintain the election. In the period of time that I was there, I was followed by the secret police. There was a pool of blood in my room to intimidate me. There were bowls of fruit to scare me, with the poisoning scares that were going on. Telephone calls were quitting in the middle of conversations. Telephone calls were going silent at one end. It was constant. Why? It was because I was reporting from Independence Square back to Canada, telling Canadians what the realities of the situation were there.
It was a culture of intimidation then and it looks as though this culture of intimidation is returning once again.