The police can only make you talk if they know who to make talk in the first place.
Reading your messages tells them who to interrogate, where to find them, who else is involved, etc.
Encryption is important especially in such countries.
The police need to crack the encryption protocol (not impossible, telegram use non-standard crypto), or somehow gain access to telegram's server farm.
>Reading your messages tells them who to interrogate, where to find them, who else is involved, etc.
Why read my messages if they can start from me? Or that other guy who posted something on twitter? Or any other place? Or talked to someone.
I'm not saying encryption is unimportant. I'm saying that it really only matters as long as all parties involved keep their business secure in the first place.
Not to mention that they police don't really work with that kind of precision here.
If you can choose secure communication vs. insecure communication you're better off choosing secure. You're right of course this doesn't protect you 100%, but it's a lot better than not having secure communication.
Does that mean even with Signal your friend could be compelled to unlock their phone and reveal the comms? Sure. It's still better to have that be the requirement than access to all comms by default. It requires more specific and high effort targeting. It makes it harder to just query keywords generally to find people. It's the better default state.