"Writing: such has been my crime ever since I was a small child. To this day writing remains my crime. Now, although I am out of prison, I continue to live inside a prison of another sort, one without steel bars. For the technology of oppression and might without justice has become more advanced, and the fetters imposed on mind and body have become invisible. The most dangerous shackles are the invisible ones, because they deceive people into believing they are free. This delusion is the new prison that people inhabit today, north and south, east and west...We inhabit the age of the technology of false consciousness, the technology of hiding truths behind amiable humanistic slogans that may change from one era to another...Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government or head of state, or to hold parliamentary elections. True democracy obtains only when the people - women, men, young people, children - have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor, or female, or dark-skinned."
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Memoirs from the Women's Prison
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nawal_El_Tatawy
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Nawal El Tatawy
Nawal El Tatawy (born 14 September 1942) is an Egyptian politician and economist who was the minister of economy and foreign trade from 2 January 1996 to 8 July 1997. She worked at various institutions in different capacities, including the National Bank of Egypt and the World Bank.
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