As Ethiopia goes, so goes the whole Horn of Africa – a region where instability can have major security and humanitarian implications for the United States and Europe.

Freedom is partial to no race. Freedom has no religion. Freedom favors no ethnicity. Freedom discriminates not between rich and poor countries. Inevitably freedom will overwhelm Ethiopia.

I've never conspired to overthrow the government; all I did was report on the Arab Spring and suggest that something similar might happen in Ethiopia if the authoritarian regime didn't reform.

We live in an age of global expectations. Our hopes have converged in many ways, none more so than in our democratic aspirations.

Democracy is a destiny of humanity which cannot be averted. It can be delayed but not defeated.

Under the previous regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, I was detained. So was my wife, Serkalem Fasil. She gave birth to our son in prison in 2005.

I am jailed, with around 200 other inmates, in a wide hall that looks like a warehouse.

As Ethiopia goes, so goes the whole Horn of Africa - a region where instability can have major security and humanitarian implications for the United States and Europe.

All the great crimes of history, lest we forget, have their genesis in the moral wilderness of their times.

Tyranny is increasingly unsustainable in this post-cold-war era. It is doomed to failure. But it must be prodded to exit the stage with a whimper - not the bang that extremists long for.