Nothing teaches you the value of freedom and the vote more than life in Gaddafi’s Libya

My friend Samira, who grew up in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, acquired the right to vote – for the first time ever – in her 40s in Malta. Today she voted for the second time in her life. When you have grown up under a terrible dictatorship in which it is extremely dangerous to speak your mind, where fear is internalised and gross violations and corruption normalised, you can see things clearly.

And because I know how difficult she finds it to shake off the association between danger and making a public declaration of her views, I also know just what a very big statement this is.