Topic: Human Rights from the Perspective of Different Cultures

Afternoon Session, Oct. 15

Elie Wiesel
President Clinton, President Havel, it is my honor to open the afternoon session of this conference, which is the fifth about human rights, the fate of the world and humanity.
President Clinton, this morning we had a lively discussion on many issues that have dominated your own life as President. What to do in a world that does not live in peace? What to do in a world that has known too much violence? A world in which the respect for the other has suffered many defeats. Naturally, every word that has been uttered here had been received with warmth, especially when we spoke about the tragedy that befell our nation, and the world, when the terrorists have struck New York and Washington. I wish you could have seen and heard all the participants speaking about that hour of sadness, that hour of embarrassment as human beings, but also that hour of commitment to justice and peace and harmony. We have spoken about religion, about politics, about philosophy, metaphysics — it was a good meeting and I’m convinced that this one will be worthy of that one, too.
The topic is again human rights and culture and we shall try to analyze, or to have you analyze, the theme, each from his and her viewpoint. From you, Mr. President, what I think I would like, is to hear you tell us, have you changed your outlook on certain issues as a result of September 11th? Is it an event that came to you as a surprise, knowing what you know — and you know so much. Is there anything that we haven’t done? Is there anything about our society, our own society in America, that makes us wonder, how come these nineteen men who lived in our midst haven’t learned anything about our values, meaning the respect for life and also the determination that whatever we have to say we can say with words, not with crimes, not with violence. I’m sure that you have had many thoughts about your place in history, but we know your place in history, and you know we admire you, with affection for what you have done. But I’m sure you have also seen yourself as afterwards, what did it do to you when you came to ground zero? We have been there, Marion and I too, and we have seen that. So I would give the floor to someone who has known, who has had power, and knew how to use it, and see what is the relationship between power and human rights? Mr. President.

Bill Clinton
Thank you very much. First of all, I want to thank my long time friend, President Havel and Elie, thank you for hosting this Forum and for not cancelling it. It is more important than ever that people who have tried to be the conscience of the world on these issues meet in the aftermath of what happened on September 11th. I have many friends and former colleagues here, I thank my former Ambassador and Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights John Shattuck and President De Klerk, it is good to see you and Foreign Minister Ramos-Horta, thank you, it is good to see you sir; it is good to see you in office instead of in my office, it is good. And I would like to thank Ambassador Stapleton for meeting me this morning and for his service here.
Let me first of all say that anything I say today should be viewed in the context of my most important position now which is that I am just a citizen of my country who strongly supports the united efforts of the American people with their allies under the leadership of President Bush to deal with the present terrorist threat. And I have been in that position. I know what it is like to be second-guessed, so I did not come here to give public advice today but to give public support to the present efforts. What I would like to do is to look behind that and to try to answer the questions that Elie asked about what happened and why. And I think I would like to begin with a story.
On September 11th, the terrorists that targeted New York, Mr. bin Laden and his people, they doubtless thought that it was a great thing that they can bring down the World Trade Center Towers, which they saw as symbols of corrupt materialism. But I live there. And my wife represents the people of New York in the Senate, and also had the honor of appearing at this Forum a couple of years ago. To me, the New York I know represents a big step towards the world most of us are trying to create, which advances human rights and global responsibility. There are people there from one hundred and fifty different racial and ethnic groups, from every conceivable religious tradition in the world, living and working together. There were firemen and policemen who died, in the hundreds, to save the lives of people that the terrorists were trying to kill. I don’t think they are symbols of corrupt Western materialism. There was a man who came all the way to New York from Oklahoma City because his wife was murdered in Oklahoma City by an American terrorist who blew up a federal building there. And he told me he had no one to talk to when it happened to him so he drove himself to New York and sat there, day after day, talking to the victims. I met a man who was on the eighty-fourth floor of the World Trade Center Tower, when the plane hit on the eighty-fifth floor, he immediately got everyone off his floor and then, with a friend, carried a woman who was disabled, down eighty-four flights of stairs to safety, before the building collapsed. I met a woman who was a school principal, who lost her sister in the World Trade Center and lost her school because it was next door and terribly damaged. She immediately held school again, as soon as she could find a place for the children to meet. I met victims’ families from Europe, East Asia, South Asia, Africa, Mexico, South America, Australia, and, yes, from the Middle East. We lost a lot of Muslims in the World Trade Center on September 11th, people who came to America to build their lives, not lose their lives. So the New York that I know represents a future that is very different from the future that the people who blew their lives apart want. And I think we should begin with that.
The United States, to be sure, has not had a perfect record in the world, and we can be criticized. But I think it is important to note, we are dealing here with a basic struggle for the fundamental character of the twenty-first century. And that most of us have a very different notion than Mr. bin Laden and the Taliban do about the nature of truth, the value of life, and the content of community. Most of us come out of traditions that teach us that we should value the truth and seek it, but no one will ever have the whole truth because we are limited, finite imperfect human beings. They believe they have the truth. And the world is divided into those who agree with them, and therefore have the truth, and those who do not. Fanatics throughout history have believed that. That leads us to very different conclusions about the value of life. We believe that, no matter what your racial, or religious, or ethnic background and your political views, your life has value. And we have something to learn from you.
They believe that the world is divided into three categories: the Muslims who agree with them, the Muslims who do not agree with them, who are heretics, and the non-Muslims, who are infidels. And everybody in the latter two categories, are all legitimate targets, even a six-year-old girl who went to work with her mother on the morning of September 11th in the World Trade Center. We believe that anybody can be part of our community who accepts the rule of engagement. That everyone counts, everyone deserves a chance, we all do better if we work together. We are free to celebrate our diversity because we know our common humanity is more important. They believe community is a group of people who think alike, dress alike, act alike and whose rules are enforced, as we have all seen now from the excerpts of that courageous movie, Behind the Veil, by people who beat women in public, paint their windows black and sometimes shoot them for doing what they are not supposed to do.
Now, I think it is important to get the basic facts out because in America, when I go to the schools the children want to know, why do they hate us so much? Children in New York, in lower Manhattan, just in lower Manhattan, come from eighty or more different ethnic and racial groups and they live together every day. They want to know, why do they hate us so much? And the second thing I get asked by nine-year-old children, the kinds of things you hope your children will never ask you, how did bin Laden get these people to commit suicide? And so I answer these questions as best I can. But it all starts from our very different views of the nature of truth, the value of life, and the content of community. Therefore, I will say again, I think it is absolutely imperative that we win the particular fight we are now engaged in, in Afghanistan. However, beyond that it seems to me that there are a deeper set of questions. If we want a world which has more human rights and more global responsibility, the world has to have people who are free to exercise those rights, who have a genuine opportunity to realize them, who recognize their responsibility to make the most of them, and there must be a global community that supports the development of those rights, a community that does not make exclusive claims to the truth, but instead is rooted in our common humanity and the obligations that flow from that. Now, let me say what I think that means. I think it means that we have an obligation, those of us who come from wealthier countries, to increase the benefits and reduce the burdens of the twenty-first century world.
And I would like to just ask you briefly to go through an exercise that I try to take my American audiences through every time when I speak about this and I will do it quite briefly. If we were meeting on September 10th, the day before the terrorist incident, and I had asked you this question, what would your answer be? If I asked you on September 10th: What is the dominant force of the twenty-first century world? If you live in a wealthy country and you are an optimist, you might have answered, it seems to me, one of four things. You might have said the global economy. It has made my country rich and it has lifted more people out of poverty than any in the last twenty years and ever before. You might have answered, secondly, no, it is the revolution and information technology. All of us will be on TV all over the world today. When I became President in January 1993, there were only fifty sites on the World Wide Web. When I left office eight years later, there were three hundred and fifty million. In eight years. Or, thirdly, you might have said, no, it is the scientific revolution. We are about to find out what is in the black holes in outer space; the sequencing of the human genome has raised a real prospect that in countries with good health systems babies will soon be born with life expectancies over ninety years. Or you might have said, the most important factor of the early twenty-first century is the explosion of democracy and diversity. In last few years when I was President, I had the great honor of serving at the first time in history when more than half the world’s people lived under governments of their own choosing and when in the wealthier countries, there was greater and greater religious, racial and ethnic diversity than ever before – people reaching out across the lines that have divided us since the dawn of time.
On the other hand, if I had asked you this question and you were a more pessimistic person, what Hillary refers to “if you are your family’s designated worrier”, or you live in a developing country where times are tough, you might have given the following answers: you might have said, the global economy is one of the problems because half the people live on less than two dollars a day; a billion people live on less than a dollar a day; a billion and a half people never get a clean glass of water; a woman dies every minute in child birth; one in four deaths every year comes from AIDS, TB, malaria and infections related to diarrhea; a billion people go to bed hungry every night.
Or you might have said, no, it’s the environmental crisis of the globe. If the world warms for the next fifty years as much as it did the last ten, we will lose whole nations in the Pacific; we will lose fifty feet of Manhattan Island; we will lose the Florida Everglades in America, one of our most precious resources. There will be literally tens of millions of food refugees and a lot more violence and terrorism, unless we do something about it. Or you might have said, no, long before global warming gets us, the health epidemics will. Public health systems all across the world have broken down; we have thirty-six million AIDS cases but if we do not change direction, we will have a hundred million in four years. The fastest growing rates of AIDS are not in Africa, where most of the cases are, but they are in the former Soviet Union, on Europe’s back door; the second-fastest growing rate in the Caribbean on our front door; the third fastest growing rate in India, the world’s biggest democracy; and the Chinese just admitted that they have twice as many AIDS cases as they thought, and only four percent of the people know how the disease is contracted and spread. If we do not do something about this, this will be the worst plague since the fourteenth century, when the bubonic plague killed one in every four people in Europe.
Or you might have said, even on September 10th, no, I think the biggest problem would be terrorism, driven by the explosion of population in poor countries, and ancient racial and religious and tribal and ethnic conflicts married to modern means of death; because a lot of people were thinking about it before September 10th. Here is the point I want to make: if you take the four positive things – the economy, the medical advances, the technology advances, democracy and diversity; and the four negative things – poverty, climate change, the health crisis and the conflicts rooted in racial and religious tensions with modern means of death, they all reflect the same thing: the most stunning degree of interdependence in the history of humanity. If you take down walls and collapse distances, and spread information, you will give people more benefits than ever before. But, even if you live in the United States, you will also give them more vulnerability than ever before because the distance and the walls are not there and the knowledge is in the hands of people who didn’t have it before. So what happened on September 11th is the dark underside of many of the good things that have been unfolding in the world over the last ten or fifteen years. It is therefore necessary, in my view, if we want the world of unprecedented inter-dependence to be positive rather than negative for most people, to develop a far higher level of consciousness among our leaders and among our people than has ever existed. We have to get the people in the developing world to turn away from primitive hatreds; we have to get people in the developed world to turn away from shortsighted selfishness. So, yes, in the moment we have to win the fight we are in.
But over the long run, we have got to figure out how to spread the benefits and shrink the burdens of this new age. Which means, for countries like the United States, we have to do more to combat global poverty; last year’s debt relief for the poorest countries was a good beginning. We funded two million micro enterprise loans a year when I was President. We should do more of that, much more. We have to do more to get all of our children in school. Brazil is the only developing country that I know of to have ninety-seven percent of its primary-school kids in schools because they paid their mothers who have their kids go to school. We should just fund that program everywhere in the world. We have to finance better health systems; the Secretary General of the UN who just won the Nobel Prize along with the organization, deservedly so, has asked us, the wealthy countries, to give seven to ten billion dollars a year for a trust fund to fight AIDS and other health problems. We ought to do it. Uganda cut that AIDS death rate in half in five years with no medicine. If we could have those kinds of prevention programs and get the medicine out, there does not have to be one hundred million cases in five years.
We should be involved seriously in avoiding the kind of climate change catastrophes that will come to every country, and America should do its part. This is the ultimate problem: interdependence. Today, America puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than anybody else. But it has just as bad an impact in East Timor as it does in America. In thirty years, if we do not set a good example, India and China will be putting more greenhouse gases in the air than we are, and it will have just as bad an impact in America as it does in India and China. This is serious business, and there is a lot of work there, lot of jobs for otherwise unemployed people if we do it right.
And finally, I think we have to deal with the challenges presented by the frustrated people of the world which means that we have to do much more to support democracy and human rights explicitly: the work of responsible NGOs, the work of peace and reconciliation. And we should recognize that it is hard. I was just thinking about what has happened in my lifetime. Martin Luther King killed by people who opposed him, Mandela imprisoned for almost thirty years by people who opposed him. But think of this, Gandhi killed by a Hindu who did not want him to make India available to people of other faiths; Sadat killed by an Egyptian Muslim who thought he was not a good enough Muslim; Rabin killed by an Israeli Jew who thought he was not a good enough Israeli because he wanted to give the Palestinians a homeland. These things are not easy to do. And, as I said before, I am quite well aware that we are not blameless. But, I will say again, we have to recognize some basic things: the world will be interdependent; the question is whether it will be good or bad for people, poor people in the developing world, and people in the developed countries. We in the rich countries have to recognize that we can no longer claim for ourselves what we deny for others, and the aggrieved of the world have to realize they cannot redeem their suffering by our destruction. Like it or not, we will have to finally reach across the human divide in a way that no people ever have in all of human history. But if we do, we can give our children the future of our dreams. Thank you.

Elie Wiesel
Mr. President, you have given us hope and for this we thank you. The only way for us to respond to your words that moved us deeply about New York is, I would like to ask all of us for a moment of silence, just thinking of the victims, who lost their lives simply because they were there. Just because they were there. They didn’t do anything wrong. Men, women, children, Jews, Muslims, Christians, who were there, and that’s why they died.
(A moment of silence.)

Thank you very much, Mr. President. Thank you again for being here with us, and for giving us a picture of what we must do to preserve our own humanity, in a world that is so difficult, so complex and often so threatening. Now next on the list of participants today, we have three more participants, and I would like you to observe the rule established already my friend Jacques — please do not go beyond ten minutes. Except there’s one exception I must say because His Eminence the Sheikh, Sheikh Ali asked for fifteen and he said that Dani Karavan has offered him five minutes of his time. Which means that we have generosity here coming to a marvelous dimension of humanity. So the next speaker will be, His Eminence Sheikh Mohammed Mohammed Ali. We asked him actually to speak on this because he will speak about human rights and faith; human rights and religion. Can religion bring people together? It must, for after all we have the same God. Sheikh Ali.

Sheikh Mohammed Mohammed Ali
President Clinton, President Havel, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Before I talk upon my topic, which will be the Islamic Doctrine of Human Rights, or human rights from the perspective of the Islamic view, I wish to convey my heartfelt condolences to all the fami- lies, friends, relatives of the victims of the 11th of September. It was really a barbaric terrorist attack on the whole world and on the whole people. I wish to make this clear — that these attacks are against all religions, against Islam. Those people are a cult, they are not belonging to any religion, and they are not belonging to Islam as a great religion. This tragic event was an attack on our shared civilization.
On my topic, secondly, in discussing the Islamic doctrine of human rights I would like to distinguish such a doctrine from the human rights practices and the abuses in certain Muslim countries. Abuses of human rights in the so-called Islamic countries like Afghanistan or, for that matter, in Iraq, which is my country, no more reflect Islam’s view of human rights than did the practices of Torquemada and the Inquisition in the Middle Ages or the Nazis in Germany reflect Christian doctrine with respect to human rights; or, for that matter, did the Baruch Goldstein attack in Hebron reflect the attitude of Judaism towards the freedom of religion. It is individuals, be they Muslims, Christians, Jews, Tamils or Hindus, who may abuse human rights, not the theological doctrines themselves.
For a better understanding of Islam’s view towards human rights, one must start with one key difference between Islamic political thought and Western political thought, as such thought has emerged since the Enlightenment through the works of philosophers such as Rousseau. This difference relates to the concept of sovereignty. To whom does political sovereignty belong? In Islam sovereignty belongs to God. He is the ultimate giver and with whom ultimate power resides. In Western political thought, especially liberal democratic political thought, sovereignty belongs to people. It is the people who have sovereignty and who convey it to the governments. Therefore, governments obtain their legitimacy from the people and lose it if the people withdraw their support for a government. As I said earlier, under Islamic political doctrine, it is God, and not the people, who provides legitimacy to a government and to its laws. The effect of this difference is that under Islamic political doctrine, even if people wanted particular laws or particular governments, those governments or laws may not be legitimate if the particular law or government is in violation of God’s will. Respectively, as such will is conveyed in Koran and interpreted by Islamic scholars. I am a Shiite Muslim scholar and I have been educated as such. As a result I will provide an outlook on Islam and human rights with a particular Shiite Islamic view. In practice, though, the basis of doctrine is substantially similar to all schools of thought with certain minor exceptions.
The basis of Islamic law from which the Islamic Doctrine of Human Rights has evolved is the Koran, which we Muslims believe is the word of God and the Sunni, of the prophet, Mohammed. All his sayings and practices were leading the Islamic community. In the Shiite Islam, unlike certain other schools of Islamic law, we have a doctrine known as Anich’tiad which provides that Islamic law can continue to be interpreted and renewed taking into account existing circumstances. For those who are lawyers here, Anich’tiad is somewhat similar to positivism in the development of legal doctrines. Certain other schools of Islamic law, most notably the Handbelli school, from which the Wahaabi and Salafis, have emerged, have essentially banned this doctrine of legal renewal and positivism. The Taliban are followers of these schools, which is why they want to implement a state that is very similar to that one that existed one thousand five hundred years ago. By contrast, the Islamic Republic of Iran as an example, has a very different basis. A system of government has incorporated the doctrine of Anich’tiad.
Having laid the groundwork, I will now briefly describe certain key concepts relating to Islam’s view of human rights. Under Islamic law, the right to life is protected in the Koran. There is the following saying, whoever kills a human being except as punishment for murder or other crime in the land shall be regarded as having killed all mankind. The execution of another human being is only allowed for proscribed crimes and then after the open trial. I know that there are differences of opinion with respect to this matter in the Western world but I would like to point out that execution as a form of punishment is permitted under certain state laws in the United States and the U.S. Supreme Court has not decided to overrule state law on constitutional grounds. I am also aware that it has been alleged that it is acceptable under Islamic law for a Muslim to kill a non-Muslim. This is absolutely untrue and indeed the Prophet has clearly stated in this regard there is no differentiation between a Muslim and a non-Muslim. Under Islamic law, the right to liberty is also protected. Withholding someone’s freedom is very much against the laws of Islam. The Islamic law is very clear, that no citizen can be imprisoned unless his guilt has been proven in an open court. To arrest a man only on the basis of suspicion and to put him into prison without due process of law and without providing such man with a reasonable opportunity to defend himself is not permissible in Islam. In this regard I do not see that much difference between Islamic law and, for example, the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments in the U.S. Constitution.
Other universal human rights, while incorporated in, for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are also incorporated into Islamic doctrine. For example, the prohibition of torture and other cruel treatment, freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of consensus and convictions and the protection of property are all doctrines incorporated into Islamic law. I do, therefore, believe that the Islamic Doctrine on Human Rights substantially incorporates, indeed precedes, more modern concepts of human rights. There are, however, certain differences and I will try to explain their bases. One, as indicated above, there are certain aspects of Islamic law that are incorporated into Koran and in the Prophet’s sayings that we Muslims believe are absolute and cannot be open to interpretation. Therefore, if we are to accept Islam, we have to accept it in its entirety, which includes certain aspects of it that may be criticized as impacting on the rights of humans. Second, women’s rights. Islam is often criticized for treating women in a manner that is not equal to men. For example, a woman’s right to intestate inheritance is half that of a man. On its face, this may be hard to defend; however, if one looks at it in a wider context I hope that we can come up with a legitimate and reasoned explanation. In a marriage under Islamic law it is the obligation of the male to provide for the household and the children’s upbringing even if the wife is working and has her own income. Moreover, unlike the practices, for example, in Afghanistan where women are not allowed to work, Islamic doctrine prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in the workplace. Indeed, women are entitled to any job a man is entitled to, with the exception of certain hard labor type jobs.
Third, freedom of religion. Under Islamic law it is prohibited for a Muslim to revoke his religion. This may be deemed a curtailment of the right of a human being to choose his or her religion. Perhaps one way to look at it is to compare to with the law of treason. There is a rationale there. It is a law that is there to protect the community of Muslims. In this regard, although apostates are condemned to death, there is a due process of law relating to that, there are procedures to attempt to bring the person back into the faith and to ensure that such a person has truly renounced the faith. Fourth, freedom of expression. Islam generally protects the freedom of expression, whenever and wherever a person chooses to do so. However, there are limits. These limits also exist in other countries. In the United States, for example, we remember the Pentagon Papers and the U.S. government’s attempts to stop their publication.
Fifth, and I want to finalize my remarks. Therefore, I believe that Islam’s doctrine with respect to human rights is substantially similar to the Western conception of human rights. There are, however, some differences which I have briefly described above. However, in my view, these differences are somewhat marginal in the wider context of the respect of the rights of individuals. Also, I would like to add that the abuses of human rights in Muslim countries are not really based on the fundamental doctrines of Islam. These abuses of human rights were, and I am sad to say, continue to be conducted for political reasons. And the perpetrators of these abuses tend to use the religion of Islam to legitimize their behavior. To conclude, I would like to go back to the saying of the great humanist Mahatma Gandhi. On being asked about his fathers and their religions he said, “I am a humanist. I am a Hindu, but I am also a Muslim a Christian, a Farsi and a Jew. I believe that the basic principle of respect for human rights is contained in all these religions.” As the holy Koran states, all people, we made you of male and female, of different races and tribes, so that you may intermingle with each other. The most devout of you is the most honorable, God is the most knowledgeable, and knows your inner being. Thank you very much.

Elie Wiesel
His Eminence, thank you for what you said. Fanaticism is a scourge, it’s a malediction, and we have all suffered from fanatics, as you have heard from President Clinton. Those who kill in the name of God actually make God their accomplice and I don’t think that God would accept that. Therefore, we were glad to hear what you said about Islam and the Koran. However, there is one area where, I’m sure you will agree, that has never produced murder. No one has ever killed in the name of art. And the next speaker, therefore, will speak about human rights and art. This is Dani Karavan, very great sculptor, artist and humanist. Dani was generous in offering you five minutes of his time, but because he was so generous, I will restore the five minutes to you.

Dani Karavan
Thank you Elie, President Clinton, President Havel. My friend Elie, I have a big problem because only yesterday night I discovered that I am on the same panel with President Clinton. So, you can imagine I didn’t sleep most of the night, because I thought what I can say and how people will listen to what I will say after President Bill Clinton. But you are looking at me like I’m saying something wrong. But those were my feelings, so I changed my speech and my lecture several times. But then I remembered that there was something very personal that I would like to tell all of you.
Some years ago, I don’t remember exactly when, the late Leah Rabin and my friend Shimon Peres asked me if I could offer them something to them to give as a prize of peace, the first prize of peace of their organization, to President Clinton. And I thought, what can I offer? Then I found I had done
once a piece of art, which I called Jerusalem, city of peace, which was composed by nine little, different squares with which everybody can build for himself his Jerusalem of peace. I don’t know if you remember, but then something happened that I could not come together to this event. I thought, what kind of pity that this occasion, to come and to be close to you, I missed. But maybe it was a kind of — I don’t know what to call it because I am not religious — I don’t know, faith, or something like that, and we are here for the first time together. The same thing was when you were giving your lecture in the Knesset in Jerusalem. This was a very important moment for me because the wall behind you is one of my works, the big wall of stone, which also I dedicated to Jerusalem, the city of peace. Jerusalem, like in the Bible, a kind of prayer in the Psalms, brings us peace.
Then I was working in UNESCO doing the Square of Human Rights and on the wall which I created there near the olive tree, I wrote the, I don’t know how to call it, the motto of UNESCO, “as war was born in the mind of man, with the mind of man a fortress of peace should be built.” It’s not exactly that, it’s much better than my English. But then Rabin was killed, assassinated by a fanatic, religious Jew in the Palace of the Kings of Tel Aviv. I was there on the same night, and the next day I went to Leah and told her I would like to dedicate this Square of Human Rights in UNESCO in Paris to Yitzhak Rabin. Most of my work is devoted to human rights, to peace. I don’t know if art could really avoid discrimination, save lives of people, I don’t know. I don’t know if Guernica, one of the most important paintings to have been done in our century, really succeeded to save lives. I don’t know, but even if I don’t know, I am doing, I am trying to do everywhere.
My language is materials, forms, art, culture. I did an axe majeur in Cergy- Pontoise — a three-kilometer project, in which I created the garden of Human Rights, dedicated to great men that fight for peace, in France. In Nuremberg, I was asked to do work near the National Museum, and I found myself creating the Way of Human Rights in the place where Hitler dedicated the name of this town to his racist law. I created thirty columns with the thirty paragraphs of the Declaration of Human Rights in German and in thirty different languages, starting with Yiddish. And then other people who are discriminated against and other people who fight against discrimination. Ramos-Horta was there, in the opening inauguration of this work. The city of Nuremberg created a prize for human rights and Sergei Kovalyov got the first prize when President Havel, who is a member of the jury, proposed that he get this prize for human rights, and came to give the laudatio. And Nuremberg, this town of the Nazis, has got the prize of human rights of UNESCO this year!
So what art can do for human rights? If this work could really save lives, could create better life in our world? I was born in Israel, to parents who came from Europe after the First World War, Jewish, Israeli, Zionists, with a lot of hope to create a new society and a new life. My culture is to understand others, to respect the other. My culture is peace. In my culture, God, one of his names is peace. Elie can put it better than I can, he knows better than I do, I am not really a philosopher and I’m not a historian, I am only an artist who tries to do something so that our children will live in a better life.
So how could we do it? What should we do? If this forum could really bring something, create some weapons, not weapons of war, weapons of peace... Maybe. I have more questions than answers.
Thank you.

Elie Wiesel
The last participant is Jelena Panza, originally from the Students’ Forum and actually, why is she here and what does she speak about? Very simple: youth and human rights. After all, what we are doing is for our young children and students. It is their century. Mr. President and Mr. Havel, I have been a professor for many, many years and occasionally we have to talk about historical events. And my students really did not pay that much attention to current affairs. They preferred to study Plato and Sophocles, books were more important. And I felt, in one way, I felt very proud, I teach them well. On the other, I didn’t. Come on, historic events are taking place. In this time, they do. This time when we spoke in class about what was happening in New York, they all were concerned. Because after all it’s their century. And you, therefore, will speak about this century.

Jelena Panza
Thank you. You guys are all a hard act to follow, I must admit. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, I would like to thank Forum 2000 and the Students’ Forum 2000 for the amazing privilege of being able to be here today and speak to you all.
On the topic of human rights in different cultures I would like to share some personal experiences and ideas I’ve acquired in the past month. As some of you may or may not know I currently live in Manhattan, New York City, and was also there on September 11th, during the despicable acts of terrorism that cost the city so dearly. Although I am aware that this topic has already been emphasized today and in the past four weeks, I must honestly admit that it is still of utmost relevance to me personally and I hope that you will bear with me as I try to put an individual spin to a tale that has undoubtedly been repeated to you on numerous occasions.
New York City is a town defined by its diversity. So much defined by it, that there is practically no food or culture that cannot be found or explored within its city limits. To quote a statistic which aptly enforces this point: over forty percent of the inhabitants of New York City are foreign-born. Equally, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were, in a sense, a microcosm of the world entire. There is hardly an ethnicity, nation, belief system or race whose members cannot be found amongst the victims of the World Trade Center attack. People from all walks and stages of life working individually and together had their lives cut short or forever changed on that day in September. Consequently, the destruction of this symbol of economic power, fueled by people of all backgrounds, is also the destruction of an internally diverse community. This community had managed to overcome its differences in the interest of a greater good, albeit one that was financially advantageous for all involved. Nevertheless, the tragedy of that destruction is not only a tragedy on an individual level, although obviously, individual lives, families and livelihoods have been forever eradicated or altered, but also the tragedy of one specific diverse community.
In the wake of this devastation, many people had very negative expectations of the city and its inhabitants. In a city where every facet of human society is represented, a city suddenly faced with a direct attack on its citizens by fanatic terrorists falsely claiming to represent not only various national groups, but also the second largest religion in the world, Islam, it was widely believed that repercussions including violent reactions of racism and bigotry by certain citizens against other citizens were inevitable. Scenarios of martial law, nightly curfews, and racial rioting were envisioned as the only logical result of so much loss of life. These were all inherently very negative predictions and valuations of what a diverse community like New York was capable of. I can tell you that people envisioning those scenarios were wrong. Personally, I witnessed quite the opposite. To me, it seemed, there was an enormous outpouring of compassion, empathy and solidarity in the peoples that make up New York City. In essence, it appeared that even the last notions keeping the populace at a distrustful distance were being torn down in the name of humanity. Humanity, common desires, needs and sorrows had taken precedence over the sometimes petty disputes that had earlier caused friction.
In an overwhelming majority, human emotions and humane deliberations had overcome or at least temporarily silenced the selfishness and replaced it with an understanding for each other. Amongst other things, this was reflected in the willingness of businesses and individuals to share their more or less good fortunes with others. For example, numerous restaurants were offering free food, some movie theaters were offering free movie viewing, and most profoundly, many average people were even offering their homes to others who had been displaced as a result of the attack. Keep in mind, rents in Manhattan are amongst the most expensive in the world, so this is therefore a great sign of goodwill. All these examples are signs of New Yorkers in general having made a choice. One that is available to all of us on a daily basis. In the power play of unity versus disunity, helping versus destroying, acceptance versus ignorance, New York has shown overwhelmingly that it has chosen unity, helping and acceptance of others. No matter that this level of harmony may be a temporary reaction to all the tragedy that has recently been heaped upon the city, this ideology need not be a temporary one for us as individuals.
In our lives, we can choose to exude compassion and acceptance or we can choose to segregate ourselves both physically and emotionally from people we perceive as different. The choice is ours, a personal choice. But only by making it can we progress as a species and as a global society. At the end of the day, all people have the same basic needs, desires and hopes for themselves and their children. These notions and ideals can only be achieved if we step outside our own cultural norms to embrace and learn from others, especially those we initially don’t understand at all. Cooperation and compassion are the keys to empowering and enforcing human rights everywhere. We need to stretch out our hands in the darkness and hopefully somewhere and sometime soon our outstretched hand will touch someone else’s. Maybe then the darkness won’t seem so dark. Thank you.

Elie Wiesel
President Clinton, we heard Dani speak about Yitzhak Rabin, and I will never forget the night that we flew together in your plane to the funeral. I’ve been to Jerusalem many times. That night was different. I remember, you were there. I didn’t utter a word, I couldn’t speak. Just couldn’t speak. Well, we have been here for so many years, to learn from one another, and we have already learned a lot. Your session, from other sessions, we have learned how to listen, how to share, how to share fears, concerns and also to imagine triumphs. When Marion and I were in South Africa in 1975, if anyone had told us that we shall see the end of apartheid, we wouldn’t have believed it. And now apartheid came to an end. We were in Russia. I was there in ’65. If anyone had told me I would see the end of communism, I wouldn’t have believed it. It came to an end. Things are possible, if human beings are ready to be human. Meaning, open to each other. It’s possible.
Since we’ve come to an end of this session, I want simply to remind you that the next one will be very interesting. Please stay. It’s about human rights and health. But before that, I think I owe it to you to tell you, why have I become involved in human rights? After all, I study the Bible, I write novels, I teach, why? Many, many, many years ago. Because I belong to a generation that felt abandoned by the Almighty and betrayed by mankind. And yet, I proclaim one must not estrange oneself from either the Creator or his creation. We Jews have seen what racists and fanatics, murderers, did to our people. Are we to turn our back to the world now? We have learned that human beings are capable of unspeakable cruelty. Are we to give up on humanity? For centuries and centuries, both home and in exile, the descendants of Abraham and the disciples of Moses tried to teach moral laws to society. And were repeatedly slapped by its fanatics. Are we to ignore society
for good? What about the children of tomorrow?
On the other hand, we have also seen that the human soul is capable of generosity and warmth, and we have seen it recently. Even on the edge of the abyss, it is possible to dream of redemption. One minute before the killer kills, his victim may invoke the presence of God. One minute before I die, I’m still a mortal. So I still believe in the humanity of human beings, in spite of some human beings. In spite of the fanatics who did what they did, atrociously, obscenely, in New York. I still believe in religious faith. I still believe that man can live with God, and move God to be compassionate to his creation. I believe, in spite of what I have seen, in a future for our society, for our children. In spite of what the enemy has done to language, I cling to it. What would I do without it? Both life and death depend on it, says the Ecclesiast. Whether words carry pain or deceit, whether they hurt or heal, whether they become curse or blessing, the choice is ultimately in our hands. And this is what we can learn only from one another, as we have done this afternoon. Thanks to you, President Clinton, to you President Havel, Eminence, Dani, Jelena, thank you all.