People generally want to get away from dictatorships, and dictatorships generally don’t want them to leave. See for example North Korea.

How else do you explain people willing to die to leave and why do you think the party tried to stop them?

> Not having free elections makes it a dictatorship (or at least not a democracy).

That’s how it was! The leader of the dictating party does not deny this is how it was! You’re delusional!