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Multiparticle production in high energy interactions, from e+e- annihilation to hadronic and heavy ion collisions, shows thermal features in species abundances and transverse momentum spectra, with a universal temperature around 150 - 200 MeV. We propose a common basis for this behavior. Because of color confinement, the physical vacuum forms an event horizon for quarks and gluons, which can be crossed only by quantum tunnelling, i.e., through the QCD counterpart of Hawking-Unruh radiation. Such radiation cannot transmit information to the outside; it must be thermal, with a temperature determined by the strong force at the confinement surface.