There are places that are frightening because at just about every corner you can sense oppression, you feel the fear in the air, air that seems thin, as if everyone were suffocating. In such places, people scurry along without looking at one another, words spoken in public are hushed, a world of whispers, where outspokenness is something for a courageous few. There are places where such scenes unfold, as the iron fist of tyranny is manifest at every street corner, the police are a terrifying instrument of maintaining order, not law.