Topic: Human Rights and State Sovereignty

Morning Session, Oct. 17

John Shattuck
I would like to begin this third day of our conference, the last of a series of conferences, Forum 2000, by thanking President Havel, and I will repeat these thanks to him in person, of course. I think it is fitting that this final conference of this remarkable series be dedicated to the search for human rights and it is a great gift that President Havel has given to us that this conference is so dedicated.
We all know that, in this century that has just begun, and in the last century, President Havel stands very tall among the world’s great human rights leaders. Tall in stature in every sense of that world, and an inspiration to all who wonder how mankind can prevail in the struggle for freedom. As a citizen of the United States and a citizen of the world, I was deeply moved, as I know many were, by the lighting of candles last night against the terror that seeks to extinguish all human rights. And I want to thank President Havel for lighting the first candle and for lighting the world by doing that.
And let me launch our discussion this morning, because I think it is very fitting to do that by quoting something that he wrote, which for me is the rallying cry of the whole human rights movement. President Havel said, “I am not an optimist, because I do not believe that all ends well. But I am not a pessimist, because I do not believe that all ends badly. Instead, I am a realist who carries hope, and hope is the belief that freedom has meaning, and that liberty is always worth the struggle.” This morning, we are asking a question which lies at the heart of this conference. And the question is: How, after all the theory and rhetoric of human rights, can human rights be implemented? How are they implemented? What is done to implement them? What are the tools for implementing them? What are the struggles that people have gone through? Clearly, the most compelling and immediate answer to that question is the struggles of all of the human rights leaders at this conference, and millions of others around the world. Struggles through local organizations and grassroots action, far from conferences and governments, but in the places where human freedom is most severely challenged. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the moral and political force behind this movement, as we know, but critics and skeptics say that this declaration is just rhetoric. But history, I believe, shows otherwise, and I also, as an optimist who is, nonetheless, a realist, believe that the future can show otherwise.
For example, in the same month in which the Universal Declaration was adopted, the world through the UN General Assembly passed the first resolution, which launched the long struggle to end the apartheid system in South Africa. This struggle ended in one of the greatest human rights success stories of the last half-century. And I think what happened in South Africa illustrates two different, fundamental, equally important ways of implementing human rights. First, through democratic revolutions within countries. And second, perhaps more controversially, through outside intervention by the international community. Now, state sovereignty is the historic barrier that stands in the way of both of these means of implementing human rights. Sovereignty, as we know, is cited by tyrants as a way of preventing democracy from within and blocking intervention from without. But, let me also add, it is cited often by large democratic countries, such as my own, as a way, perhaps, of avoiding international human rights norms in such diverse areas as capital punishment and the creation of an international criminal court.
State sovereignty in the West and the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of states, I think, came out of the devastating European wars of the seventeenth century, which, in many ways, were centered right here in the Czech Lands and in Prague. But the West itself, I think, has made, in many cases, a mockery of this principle in the twentieth century through colonialism, through the terrors of two world wars and now, perhaps, in some instances through the negative effects of economic globalization. But on the positive side, coming out of the second world war, another principle, I think, began to emerge, which is really the principle that we are talking about most here today. It’s a principle that coincided with the rise of a global human rights movement. And that is, that countries cannot be allowed to hide behind gross violations of human rights through a veil of state sovereignty. And I think that this principle is, in many ways, expressed in the idea of the United Nations, that is nations united against tyranny, oppression, hunger and disease, which, as we discussed yesterday, is an ideal we are all struggling to reach. But that, of course, does not begin to answer the question about what to do about gross violations of human rights.
So, this morning, we will spend our time listening to stories and powerful examples of human rights leaders on the ground from many different countries, who will tell us how they wage their struggles. And I think, as we look for common elements in these stories, we need to address six key questions. Let me just pose them at the outset of our discussion. First, when and how should the international community support domestic movements within countries for human rights and democracy? When can the international community most effectively engage, and how? Second, how can we encourage this international involvement without risking that human rights movements in countries will be negatively affected or, perhaps, putting it in another way, manipulated by outside interests in ways that damage the human rights movement inside countries. Third, how and when should the international community intervene to prevent humanitarian disasters before they happen, above all genocide? What are the painful lessons of Rwanda, of Bosnia, of Kosovo, of Chechnya, of East Timor and of many other human rights catastrophes of recent years? Fourth, what are the tools of intervention, and when and how should they be used? What of diplomacy, or of sanctions, or, as a last resort, military intervention? Fifth, what is the role of international justice in the implementation of human rights? How should those who have
committed crimes against humanity be punished, and by whom? How can justice be enforced, how can criminals be caught? How can due process of law be ensured? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what exactly is the international community to which we often refer to in general terms? Does it always have to be the United Nations? Can it be subgroups of nations, can it be regional groups of nations coming to the assistance of a country or the people within a country. What if the United Nations can’t agree? We all know, of course, the situation in Kosovo and we will hear about that more from Veton Surroi in a few moments. But I don’t want to get ahead of our stories. These are the questions and, I believe, through the stories and powerful experiences that we will hear this morning, some of the answers to these questions will emerge, and we will invite discussion from the conference participants and audience in general. We are very, very honored, I think, to have with us one of the great leaders of the human rights movement, who I will introduce as our first speaker, and our leading speaker here, to start the discussion. José Ramos-Horta is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of East Timor, but that only begins to tell the story, of course, he is also the leader of a great struggle that freed the people of East Timor and he did so in an honorable way that brought him quite justifiably the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996. I should also say that José and I met a number of times before, while the struggle was in full process, and I was honored to have him come to my office and speak with me about it, and then I was very honored to be able to go and do a small part on behalf of the struggle by visiting East Timor several times. José Ramos-Horta, if you will please address us for fifteen minutes. Thank you.

José Ramos-Horta
Thank you, John. It is a particular honor and pleasure to be at this session, chaired by you. I met John Shattuck many times in Washington, in his previous life as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Humanitarian Affairs, Labor and Democracy. That was your long title. And his doors were always open to us and I know, to many, many human rights defenders. When President Clinton addressed us the other day, and he took note of my presence and said, “I am glad that you are in office and not in my office,” I presume he was referring to the many times I went to Washington to lobby the numerous U.S. political institutions, and maybe he seemed to be relieved that I am in office, and no longer going to the many offices in Washington. He was one of the world leaders instrumental in advancing our struggle, but also in advancing dialogue with many, many other countries. I remember his extraordinary talk in Beijing when he visited China. It was extraordinary, the dialogue he engaged with the Chinese audience, the first time ever that a U.S. President, in China, engaged people in dialogue.
I wish to start also by thanking President Václav Havel, Mr. Sasakawa and Forum 2000 for the kind invitation extended to me to be here today, and for the second time. And yesterday, on the first day of this conference, in the afternoon session, when not too many were here in the room, I heard what I felt was the most moving statement on a theme, actually two main themes. One was on leprosy, the statement was begun by Mr. Sasakawa, and by Ms. Law from the United States on their personal experience, their personal work in dealing with leprosy, one of the most touching, heart-breaking ills that affects fellow human beings. It was heartbreaking to hear them, their eloquent statements, but also how humanity was for so long so prejudiced, and so unkind to those who were afflicted with this disease. And as I heard them, Mr. Sasakawa and Anwei Law, I immediately made a decision to myself. When I get back to my country, I have to find out whether we do have leprosy there and if we do have, I have to go and visit these people. I did not feel very comfortable with my conscience that I personally never thought about it. So I thank Mr. Sasakawa and Ms. Law, for bringing this to the conference.
But also we heard an eloquent statement from Noerine Kaleeba from Uganda on the AIDS pandemic, the stigmatization of the AIDS sufferers and sometimes of their whole families, which is a bit reminiscent of what Mr. Sasakawa and Ms. Law talked about in the case of leprosy. And we also heard a third woman panelist of that day — we had three extraordinary women speaking that day — the third was Waris Dirie, who was speaking of her personal journey and pain on the female genital mutilation. She spoke with eloquence and emotion, and I cannot begin my comments today on this very general topic that I am sure is of interest to hundreds of millions around the world — human rights and state sovereignty — without first paying tribute and gratitude to the three who have brought this issue to us today and woke up a bit of our own humanity.
Sometime in 1990 or 1991, I do not recall exactly the year, I was in Geneva, as I would go almost every year for many, many years, to attend the UN session of the Commission of Human Rights. Sometimes frustrating, sometimes I would view it as an extraordinarily futile exercise, when you had about fifty-three countries — I do not comment on the membership itself, suffice it to say that very diverse, at least in terms of each individual human rights record of those countries sitting there — which are supposed to uphold human rights norms and standards for the rest of the world. And I would drive every morning from the town of Lyon to Geneva and I would tune in to the BBC, one of the greatest inventions of the British. And news would come on the airwaves of the BBC, at eight o’clock sharp of that particular morning I heard the story of a Soviet cosmonaut who had gone into space few months earlier in one of those record-breaking missions in space and as he began to prepare his spacecraft to return to Earth, he got this startling news from Moscow, “Do not come back, your country no longer exists.” And actually someone from Moscow suggested to him, “Circle the Earth a few more times, until we figure out what to do with you.” When he went into space — his name is Nikolai — a flight captain or colonel in Soviet Air Force, the Soviet Union was the mighty Soviet Union. No one thought, even dreamed that this mighty power would ever one day come down crumbling. He had a valid passport, bestowed on him by the mighty empire. Then, suddenly, as he was prepared to return to mother Earth, the Soviet Union was no longer Soviet Union. The empire had ceased to exist. And he actually was forced to circle, several months, then to land in Ukraine, which was by then a different country, no longer part of the Soviet Union. It was then that I reflected on the end of history, end of empires. In normal circumstances, I am a very bad driver, so I decided not to drive while thinking so I decided to stop somewhere in the fields while I though about it. And what I thought was that it is interesting to remember that every empire, every totalitarian, autocratic regime that existed over centuries, built on false foundations, on myths, on arrogance, on the use of force, on intimidation, on terror, have all came down crumbling. The Soviet Union was last, was the latest. Prior to that was the fall of the Persian Empire, the mighty Shah also came down crumbling. Soon after, we saw the liberation of Central and Eastern Europe, and a playwright in Czechoslovakia then became President of now the Czech Republic. South Africa was freed from apartheid, and as if it were equivalent of the domino theory of the Cold War, we saw a different version of the domino theory of democracies. We saw the mushrooming of the democratic regimes in Latin America and in Asia, begun with Philippines, that was before the end of the Cold War, Thailand, and, most extraordinary, only about three years ago, the coming into office, in South Korea, of one extraordinary human being, President Kim Dae-Jung.
It was then that I thought, “If the Soviet Union can collapse, can disintegrate, can implode, then why wouldn’t the Suharto regime in Indonesia?” So, in an interview with CNN on May 16, 1996, I told Richard Roth of Diplomatic License of CNN, “Within two years, the Suharto regime will come down crumbling under the weight of corruption, nepotism, cronyism, mismanagement and increasing illegitimacy of the regime.” That was May 16, 1996. And May 21, 1998 the Suharto regime actually came down crumbling. I was, obviously, a bit upset, that I missed by five days. I began to doubt my accuracy in making political forecasts. Obviously, it was quite an audacious, outrageous prediction. Serious people do not make these kind of predictions. I was just lucky, because I repeated so many times over those years that Suharto was going to fall, and he actually fell one day. So do not take it as a great tribute to my political savoir faire. But how did we arrive today where East Timor is free? As I mentioned in some of my comments a few days before, we had democratic elections on August 30, extraordinarily successful — not one single incident took place — and we have established a full East Timorese government, a constitutional assembly, the first time ever in five hundred years of our history. The Constitutional Assembly is drafting a constitution and is setting the date for Presidential elections, which will take place probably in April next year, followed by independence in May, June next year. To arrive at that point, there were a number of factors that contributed. One, obviously, is the work, the dedication of the domestic actors, and that are the East Timorese people themselves, with courage, determination, resilience, creativity and enormous faith, faith in God, or faith in whatever kept them alive through the twenty-four years of darkness. There was a small remote island abandoned by almost everyone, certainly by the major powers, with few exceptions. One exception is Portugal, the former colonial power, one of the great small countries in Europe that had been colonizing East Timor for five hundred years, lived up to its historic and moral responsibility, and for twenty-five years relentlessly pursued justice for its former colony. But there are also thousands of people around the world, from the civil society, and, obviously, other countries, that kept the issue alive. So for us, in East Timor, the question was not allowing the issue to disappear from the United Nations agenda, not to allow the issue to disappear from people’s conscience, people’s minds, and to that end, we would develop multi-pronged strategies to bring the issue to media, NGOs, to churches, academia, and lobby various institutions, European Parliament, national parliaments, the U.S. Congress.
I was just a week or so in Washington and I was lobbying again members of congress and I was telling many of them how I even saw some members of U.S. Congress growing up, current members of congress like Patrick Kennedy — I knew him when he was fifteen years old. Or, I went to the bar mitzvah of one of the senior policy aids of U.S. Congresswoman Nita Lowey from Long Island, her Chief of Staff Matthew Traub, when I think he was thirteen or fourteen. And my point was, well, I know the U.S. Congress probably much better than now, I know how to set up my own Foreign Ministry. None of us in East Timor has had any prior experience in running a country, because we did not have one; in running a government, because we never had one. So we run, learning everything from absolute zero. My point is that in the struggle for the promotion of human rights, we see in the broader context individual human rights, but also collective, people’s human rights, such as the right to self-determination, one very, very important factor was the mobilization of public opinion. In 1999, after twenty-four years of struggle, Portugal and Indonesia, under the auspices of the UN have concluded an agreement, the so-called New York Agreement, and for the first time ever Indonesia, accepted holding a referendum on self-determination in East Timor. The referendum was held on August 30, 1999. Ninety-eight percent of the people went to vote; almost eighty percent voted for independence. But then, the Indonesian Army unleashed militia gangs that brought destruction to East Timor. The country was almost completely destroyed. The capital, Dili, was destroyed by eighty percent some other districts by one hundred percent. Only one district escaped by eighty percent. Three hundred thousand people were displaced. Every infrastructure, and the public administration was obliterated. I was in New York, shuttling between New York and Washington, lobbying the U.S. Congress, administration, lobbying the Security Council, and as I watched CNN and BBC, the unfolding tragedy in my own country, I felt that I had failed my own people, that I was also partly responsible because it was because of me that they kept on having the illusion that Timor would be free — that somehow, some country, someone would come and free them. I was in the U.S. Congress and talking to the members of congress, close friends of East Timor, close friends of mine who wanted to help, but they were skeptical that the American public would support another U.S. involvement in an overseas conflict. After all, the U.S. was over-stretched in Kosovo, and they were traumatized because of what happened in Somalia. But then, public pressure continued, hundreds of thousands of people around the world went to the streets. In Lisbon alone, half a million people went to streets; in Australia, tens of thousands; in Brazil, in South Africa, Malaysia, Thailand, everywhere, all over the world there was this extraordinary movement that literally involved millions, in different ways. But those people were galvanized, mobilized by the electronic media. >From when we were first invaded twenty-five years ago to 1999-2000, there was an extraordinary revolution in information technology that made the world smaller, really turned this earth into a global village, where it became impossible for any group, a government, or a regime, to hide. Particularly when a govern-ment, a country that wishes to modernize, to industrialize, to bring prosperity, you need to open up. And as you open up, you subject yourself to this extraordinary flow, inflow and outflow of information, that render these regimes ever more vulnerable to international pressure.
To conclude — I know, I have gone a bit too long already — I was in Washington and found out that APEC was going to meet in Auckland, New Zealand; they are meeting right now in Shanghai. I flew to Auckland, New Zealand to try to lobby the APEC countries: China, Korea, Japan, U.S., Australia, New Zealand. As I arrived in Auckland, checked into a modest motel, I received a phone call from the White House. The gentleman very politely told me, “The President of United States would like to talk with you. We know you are very busy but he would appreciate if you can come and see him.” He was so polite that I felt almost like joking. I said, “Well, I have to check my schedule if I can accommodate a meeting with the President of United States.” But at that point, I felt it better if I don’t joke, and I immediately went and saw the President. My point is, when the phone call came that I was going to see President Clinton, I knew that the situation has changed in the United States. For the U.S. and other countries, and for Indonesia to finally accept international intervention — and that is one topic that John Shattuck asked us
to reflect on, “when should countries intervene?” — obviously, the first major impact came from electronic media. Someone can be killed. Thousands of people can be killed, as it happened in my country in the ‘70s. Many, many more people were killed in the ‘70s than in 1999. Yet there was no
international reaction because there were no images, no electronic media. The electronic media in turn mobilized hundreds of thousands of human beings who were affected by it. And these hundreds of thousands also used the new tools of pressure that are available to them, particularly the Internet. So they bombarded, quote unquote, various institutions with hundreds of thousands, millions of Internet messages, besides the street demonstrations. Some international mechanisms were activated, such as the World Bank, the IMF, were activated in order to bring pressure on the Indonesian Military. And the Indonesian Military had to consider them, the costs for itself, whether it is worth their international embarrassment, isolation and holding on to that piece of real estate. But beyond the United States,
Portugal, and other countries, let me say that countries in the region themselves played an enormous, crucial role, and that was: President Kim Dae-Jung of Korea, Jiang Zemin of China and the late Prime Minister Obuchi of Japan. These three key East-Asia leaders with ASEAN leaders, particularly
Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, were instrumental in persuading Indonesia that time was up, that they must leave.
My point is that international intervention, in this case you can call it humanitarian intervention, to rescue a people from a genocide, can occur and must occur with force, if necessary, under Chapter Seven of the Charter, if necessary, because in not doing so, the international community is abandoning their
people, is betraying their people, allowing genocide to continue. But also it is necessary to have public backing. All over the world there was an outcry, and it was not only in the West. There were demonstrations, including in Indonesia, demonstrations in Malaysia, in Thailand, Japan, all over, demanding intervention. And the regional countries, as I mentioned the role of China, Korea, South Korea, Japan and the ASEAN countries. So in considering intervention for whatever reason, for whatever cause, the mobilization of public opinion, and the cooperation of the regional countries are extraordinarily necessary. Of course, unfortunately, most regional organizations, with exception of the European Union, are not yet terribly effective in handling the regional crises. ASEAN needs to develop far more, needs to readapt itself to the challenging times in Southeast Asia, for it to be able to handle crises in the region. The African continent has had a much better record than most other regional
organizations, with exception of the EU, in handling crises. Particularly in the Horn of Africa, but also in West Africa. The Organization of Latin American States played an important role, and actually they did not require an outside, extra-regional intervention during the Peru-Ecuador border crisis. It was the OAS lead by Brazil that mediated and settled that dispute.
So I conclude my speech with an appeal to the international community as a whole, particularly the rich countries, to strengthen the UN and regional organizations, to establish much more credible, much more effective, preventive diplomacy mechanisms. We all talk, all the time about preventive diplomacy. But what it is really, how feasible it is, what are the mechanisms, what are the resources? And lastly, I personally, as you all have heard, probably you have read a modest opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune yesterday, I supported, as an East Timorese, who as people who were beneficiary of intervention that saved us, I supported the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden and against the Taliban.
However, I also would say that if it has been possible for the U.S. and other rich countries to forge this great alliance against terrorism, there must be the same political will, the same determination, to forge an alliance against poverty, against AIDS, against malaria. There must be a much more serious effort by the rich countries to write off the debt of the poorest countries. But writing the debt off alone will not solve our problems, if it does not include real access to the markets of the rich countries. And when I say real access in the sense that lifting all the other barriers, restrictions that sometimes are actually protectionist, when the Europeans talk about quality control and we have had difficulties in East Timor and in other poor countries exporting other agricultural goods to Europe and to the U.S. or to Australia, because they say, well, problems of diseases. Well, I do not know of any Third World country that has ever produced a mad cow. Most diseases we know in food come from Europe, and yet we and our goods are discriminated. You must really open up the markets.
At the same time, the West must stop the indiscriminate export of weapons to poor countries. Poor countries that cannot afford budgets for schools or for clean water, spend huge amounts in conventional weapons, in small arms. There has to be a stricter criterion. We are not talking about ending the arms
industry, that would be too unrealistic, but to exercise a strict control as provided by Oscar Arias in “Code of Conduct on Arms Transfer” that all the Nobel Laureates have worked on. This is my concluding message. With the hope that out of this tragedy that we are all living, that is affecting each of us, from the West all the way to East Timor, to Southern Africa, to Asia, everywhere, I, as an eternal optimist, believe that out of this tragedy, good will come about. If men and women of goodwill seize on this awakening call and really work towards ending poverty, inequity, and violence in the world. Thank you, and my apologies, Mr. Chairman, for taking so much time.

John Shattuck
Thank you, José Ramos-Horta, for those inspirational words, and I think, practical words of wisdom about how to connect a movement for human rights, as we were describing earlier, and the international community, and to do so in a way that produces the kind of victory that you showed in East Timor. Our next speaker — and I want to now introduce the panel of speakers, one at a time — is a renowned and a distinguished political scientist, and a former dissident leader, former dissident and a leader of human rights issues in Taiwan, who has made a great and lasting contribution to the democratization of Taiwan, Mr. Peng Ming-min.

Peng Ming-min
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank first the organizer of this Forum for inviting me to come here and to share some thoughts on sovereignty and human rights.
The age of human rights began half a century ago in the aftermath of World War II, when an international system human rights was drafted. It included some aspects of the UN Human Rights Charter of 1945 and of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, etc. Thus the issue of human rights can no longer be regarded as exclusively a domestic matter, but has become a grave international concern. Since then, the idea continues to evolve and develop and has reached a stage that some even called “a revolution in humanitarian concern.” We are now at the beginning of an era in which international duty of respect for human rights transcends the respect for sovereignty of nation-state. No longer does national sovereignty provide a blanket for human rights abusers. The U.S. fought a war in the Balkans in the name of human rights and humanitarian imperatives. This was the first war in recent memory waged in the name of values, rather than strategic interests. As President Clinton put it, “When a people is singled out for destruction because of their heritage and we can do something about it, the world will not look the other way.” The British Prime Minister Blair too has been campaigning for what he called “a new internationalism” based on values and the rule of law. All those point to a new principle that national sovereignty is respected only when that nation respects the basic human rights as the international law defines them. This principle is gradually becoming a dominant moral and legal norm for any government’s domestic and international behavior.
I am from Taiwan where after half a century of tremendous struggle and sacrifices, the people there have finally begun to pursue the course of democratization, which to them is a road of no return. From the President down, legislatures of all levels, and local administration, are all chosen by popular vote. The quality of the democracy there may leave still much to be desired, but the people in Taiwan are proud of the progress made so far. Nevertheless, this hard fought democracy is now being seriously threatened. Not only that, as you know, Taiwan has now become one spot on the Earth where all agree that real danger exists of actual war breaking out. Why? Because its powerful neighbor, in total disregard and contempt of the popular will of the inhabitants and in the name of so-called sovereignty, openly threatened to use force to subjugate the people there. Worse yet, this so-called sovereignty pretension is false, groundless and fictitious. It is as good as Iraq’s claim over Kuwait. What people on the island of Taiwan are facing now is hundreds of missiles deployed about one hundred miles away, all aimed openly at the people on Taiwan. And this number is increasing by almost fifty every year, and it will reach over a thousand in the near future. We have heard so much talk about the terrorism in the past months and in this very meeting. But to the people of Taiwan, if this is not terrorism, we don’t know what terrorism is. This attempt to use force against the people in Taiwan is opposed by the United States and that is a reason why Taiwan has become a very crucial international issue, but also one of the most crucial issues in U.S. foreign policy. As if being threatened by the powerful neighbor is not enough, Taiwan is being treated shabbily by the world community as well.
In order to understand fully the scale of unfairness and injustice inflicted upon the people of Taiwan, allow me to read briefly some statistics. This island is about the size of the Netherlands with population of twenty-three million, among the near two hundred nations in the world, these twenty-three million rank twenty-first in terms of number, its GNP is ranked twentieth in the world, its per capita income is ranked twenty-fifth in the world, its volume of foreign trade ranks fourteenth in the world, among nearly two hundred nations. And its volume of production in the field of computer and other communication technology ranks fourth in the world. Overall, people there believe that they are more qualified, if not equal, if not more equally qualified, than the one hundred-sixty-some members of the United Nations. And yet they are excluded from the world organizations, including the United Nations and other international organizations. Taiwan has been very actively involved in international affairs and humanitarian efforts. For instance, for years, Taiwan has been maintaining a group of agricultural experts, and medical experts in Africa. And also, at this time, Taiwan has an AIDS-control program, and Taiwan also maintains a program of anti-desertification in Africa, in south Sahara. In spite of this, Taiwan, for instance, is excluded from WHO even as observer, in spite of its humanitarian efforts, and work, in other countries.
Another rather unhappy incident, very recently, as you may know, a very respectable international foundation called Liberal International, based in England, decided to award a Prize for Freedom to the current President of Taiwan in recognition for his contribution to the democratization process in Taiwan. This award was supposed to be given in one Scandinavian country known in the world as model of democracy, freedom and human rights. And yet this country refused giving visa to the President of Taiwan to go to this country to receive this prize. It is a gigantic irony that a president of a nation, president who was popularly, democratically elected, has been denied the visa to go to another country to receive a Prize for Freedom. And this is happening in the world. The people of Taiwan have heard so much about democracy, freedom and human rights but their actual experiences makes them rather cynical. When the world talks about human rights and freedom we really hope, we think that it won’t be in an abstract academic way, we would like to think in a very concrete case how this ideal is applied or carried out in the actual world.
Taiwan has been a nation of self-governing, independent, democratic people. When people democratically, freely and directly elect their president, elect their legislator, elect their administrator, they are exercising their basic human right. Any attempt to deny and destroy this institution is the most flagrant violation of this doctrine of basic human rights. As a person who has been involved in the democratic movement in Taiwan for many decades, it is my firm conviction that in spite of those fierce polemics, fierce rhetoric surrounding the issue of Taiwan, the basic human right demands that the inhabitants of this island themselves should be the last and final arbitrators of this issue. If we think in concrete terms about this issue, in the last analysis the question came down to as follows: Do not twenty-three million people there have the right to choose the form of their own government? Do not those twenty-three million people have the right to define their status in the international community? Do not those twenty-three million have the right to decide themselves, without intimidation, their political future? Or should their political destiny be dictated by some power, thousands of miles away, which has never set foot on this island? This is the question over which, we hope, the world will take time reflecting. The chairman has raised six questions that I would like to discuss but I am under time restraint. Maybe we can do that during the question period. Thank you very much.

John Shattuck
Thank you very much for that account of the struggle for democracy and human rights in Taiwan. Before introducing the next speaker, let me just point out, perhaps, what’s obvious, that we have five distinguished speakers to tell extraordinary stories, and we have fifty minutes to do that. So I’m going to urge each to hold well within the ten minute time, as a matter of human rights of the other speakers. So I’m very honored to be able to now introduce to you now one of the voices of sanity and freedom in one of the most difficult human rights situations in the world, in Kosovo. Veton Surroi, well-known to all of us, is the founder and publisher of Koha Ditore, which is the leading newspaper in Kosovo, but more than that, through many years he has guided the struggle for human rights in Kosovo with others, and we are very honored to have him here today to speak to us about that. Please.

Veton Surroi
Thank you, John, and I want to thank President Havel for not only organizing this conference, but for actually keeping the focus on human rights even in these days of his presidency.
In 1991, I organized a very big demonstration in Kosovo with a symbolic message. We, the demonstrators, the organizers, were carrying an empty coffin through the streets of Prishtina and there were two hundred thousand of us. The message was clear, that there was imminent violence, there was then a war starting in Croatia and we wanted to show that these coffins would soon be filled with people. It was a message to all of our people and all of the people abroad that this was an imminent development. We called it the “Burial of Violence Today”, and for years we continued, including myself who was committed to non-violence, to build a non-violent struggle against one of the ruthless dictatorships of our time, Mr. Milosevic, with the hope that non-violence, that reason, would prevail. Some years later, I was hiding from Serb forces and watching bombs fall on my immediate neighborhood. This was the NATO bombing. And I caught myself in a big contradiction, or what seemed a big contradiction. As a man committed to non-violence, I was welcoming bombs. As a man committed to non-violence, I was inviting other people to commit violence in order to protect me. This may be a contradiction of human nature, but if you have not lived through war, and if you have not lived through repression, and if you have not lived the a moment when genocide is near, then you cannot understand that contradiction outright.
The Kosovar NATO intervention that came after my policy saw itself fail, my non-violent struggle saw itself fail, and it invited an armed resistance. It also came after the failures of the international community to address genocide in Bosnia and in Rwanda. Both of these were very clear reminders to the international community that in a world information age, genocide cannot be repeated. The third factor that led to the intervention was that we were speaking of conditions of a disintegrating country, the former Yugoslavia, disintegrating state structures in which the word “sovereignty” is of little importance, except as a symbol of presence in the UN. The fourth element, which is of importance, and I think is something that will be important for other crises, is that human rights violations became threats to regional stability. Human rights violations by Milosevic invited a war of a greater proportion, of Balkan proportions, with very clear implications for the great powers. The intervention came when the early signals were back in 1986, or actually 1985, when the first State Department human rights report put a focus on Kosovo. The signals were all there, and the road to human rights violations and humanitarian intervention has been closed as a circle with the case of Kosovo.
What we now have is a totally new dimension of building human rights and human rights structures without addressing sovereignty issues. Kosovo is under a UN protectorate, under UN Security Council resolution 1244, and without defining the issue of its ultimate sovereignty, there is a possibility to build institutions that will provide for human rights protection. Of course this, and the experience of East Timor, although they have their distinctions, are unprecedented operations, and as such, they will build experience for future operations in the world.
Now let’s get to another crisis which may not seem similar, although it has its similarities. Afghanistan is a full, vicious circle of human rights violations. What we have seen on September 11th with terrorism, is a human rights violation which has implications to become a human rights violation of a global scale. When terrorists can hit New York and Washington the way they have done, they can hit through biological warfare or any other form, population all over this world. Terrorism then becomes one of the main instigators, or one of the main tools, or one of the main ideologies, for that matter, of human rights violations today. For me, who has lived through NATO bombs in Kosovo, I can understand the U.S. intervention as actually an intervention that is directed at the end of the full circle in protecting human rights. War against terrorism today is war to protect human rights today and tomorrow.
Now, where is the similarity? In the sense that the state, the present state of Afghanistan, if you can call it a state, built its thought upon fanaticism. For someone who has lived for many years under Milosevic’s rule, I can see Milosevic’s Serbian nationalism exploiting Serbian national feeling the way political Islam today is exploiting Islam as such, as a religion. In that sense, the Taliban is only, for me understandably, the Islamic counterpart to Milosevic, in a sense. What the state, which builds itself on fanaticism, does is weaken the social functions of the state. The state is in a disintegrative mode and the last thing you can say about Afghanistan is that it has state sovereignty. A state that builds itself on fanaticism gets fanaticism as its sovereign right and not state as its sovereign right. What happens at that stage is the loss of functionality of the state, and therefore a loss of sovereignty of the state. Where could all this have been identified? Could it have been identified a year ago, two years ago? It could probably have been identified much earlier. Not with signals of exposures to violence, of people shooting from rifles or pistols. But actually with signals that at least half of Afghanistan presented to the world opinion, women. The Taliban’s treatment of women, the fanaticism that expelled girls from school and women from work was actually an invitation to a state where this kind of fanaticism would drive and invite terrorism as such. The early signals were there. Of course, somebody will say, do we bomb a country because it expels schoolkids from schools because they’re female? You do not, but you initiate a worldwide pressure of all sorts, not excluding military options, to actually change the state of affairs in that country. A country should not be allowed in today’s world, with our values, to exclude girls from schools or women from work. This is simply intolerable. What both Kosovo and Afghanistan are showing is that we are dealing with two competing concepts. The functionality of the state versus the sovereignty of the state. And I think, in further developments of our thoughts and of our action, we have to focus more on the functionality, on human rights, functioning democracy, economic liberties and development. That said, functional states are not actually competing with sovereign states. Functional states, and the notion of functionality, are in competition against the weakness of the state, against the state which has given its social functions to an ideology and to fanaticism.
There is, and with this I will finish, there is an anecdote from a village of ours during the Ottoman Empire. There was an evil man, an evil administrator, who did much harm to the village, and the mullah of the village invited him one day to the mosque and asked him to go to the minaret to see the world from the minaret, because when you get closer to God, you may see it in a different manner. The son of the mullah went with him upstairs. Once in the minaret, the evil man fell from the minaret to the ground, and eventually ended his life. When the son of the mullah came down, the mullah said: “I have to accept something. I have prayed to God that this evil man would fall from the minaret. And God has listened to me.” The son said, “He has, but I did a little push myself.” Thank you.

John Shattuck
Thank you very much, Veton, for helping us draw a complicated but important parallel between Kosovo and Afghanistan and most importantly, to think about the early warnings of human rights abuses, insofar as they show us the direction that very serious and gross violations may be going, in both cases. Our next speaker, Akin Birdal, is a heroic figure in Turkey, someone I’ve been privileged to know for a number of years. He is the former President of the Human Rights Association of Turkey, but what we need to know about him is that he spent a considerable amount of time in prison for his views, and for his human rights advocacy. An assassination attempt was made on his life. He has recovered, and continues the struggle, and we’re very pleased to welcome you here today. Akin Birdal.

Akin Birdal
Thank you very much, Mr. President. Dear ladies and gentlemen, I will make my speech in Turkish.
Dear chairperson, dear participants, as our world is evolving into a global village, with free movement of capital, information and communication, we have to develop global guarantees for human rights, justice, law and democracy. This is also a pre-condition for building and maintaining the world peace. This conference is an important step in this regards. Without these efforts, it will not be possible to regulate globalization as such, condemned by the Assistant Secretary-General of the UN, Mr. Anders Wijkman, as an “unrestrained process”, so as to put into the service of the great humanity. It is well known that the wealth created over the Earth is enough for every member of the human race. The ratio of the global food production to the world population is one hundred and ten percent. However, distributional injustice and greediness are also unrestrained.
Those who plan and practice what makes the globalization process, with all its negative implications for the well-being of humanity, are human persons. In the same way, it is in the hands of human persons to transform this process into a positive one. In the words of Hosni Mubarak, the President of Egypt, globalization as such is two-faceted, with opportunities on one hand, and difficulties on the other hand. However, normatively speaking, this never translates as justice on the one side and injustice on the other. In this process, “the hope is in humanity”: The fates of the peoples of the world have never been so closely connected. And humanity has never faced the threat of “total destruction” so nakedly, at no point in its history. We think that the participation of NGOs in national, regional and international decision-making mechanisms controlling the future of the human kind, in a way to enable them to represent their own futures there, will facilitate building a world of peace and freedom. Those who represent the majority of the peoples of the world should definitely participate in decisions that affect our common future. While globalization is a factual process, we are entitled to demand that it should be given a new vision in a way that human rights, justice and democracy overrule, and that, for instance, rights of the laborers and environmental conditions are improved.

Our world is undergoing the first major war of the twenty-first century. Regional and local conflicts are growing, parallel to the expansion of globalization. What can remove the grounds for conflicts and eliminate those conflicts is the recognition of diversity and the efforts to ensure equality and justice in this diversity. In our global age, everybody is the other and the same. Everybody can see her/his common points with others. What can save humanity from total destruction is a global culture of peace. The future peace can be reinforced by establishing connections between globalization and democratization on the one hand, and globalization and human liberation on the other hand. The strength of these connections will ensure a lasting peace on Earth. We believe that justice is empowered by law. Justice should never be sought by the force of violence. Security grounds never legitimize the limitation or elimination of freedoms. It should never be forgotten that, in remembrance of the Preamble of the Universal Declaration, violence finds its basis in oppression, injustice and misery.
Dear participants, the power of the rights and freedoms are based in their universality and indivisibility. Therefore, we should understand them as sources of legitimacy for constitutions rather then as norms to be translated into constitutional rules.
We know that oppression, violence, exploitation, and injustice do not discriminate religions, sexualities, or races. Likewise, we have to defend and develop rights and freedoms without any form of discrimination. All human persons are subjects of rights and freedoms. Our duty to respect and realize every human person’s rights and fundamental freedoms, and to build peace and democracy on this basis, is the underlying idea of the Universal Declaration. In 1966, the Universal Declaration was supplemented by the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as well as the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights to form the “International Bill of Rights”. Just after the Universal Declaration, the first regional instrument of human rights, the European Convention was concluded in 1950. We have recorded other achievements by concluding the Inter-American Convention of Human Rights and the African Charter. They were followed and supplemented by other instruments of the UN and the Council of Europe which define the universal norms of international and regional law. Now, these are the sources of universal protection of human rights. The Vienna Conference of the OSCE was an important step in the protection of human rights.
The emerging new concept of the “Human Dimension” — human rights, democracy and the rule of law — has been recognized by the OSCE States as an integral part in efforts to build freedom, justice and peace in the region, through the elaboration of “Human Dimension Mechanisms” to monitor the respect for human rights. That is the right basis for a new Europe. Why should the same perspective not form a firm basis for a new world? Why should the new constitution of the global world not be peace, justice, stability and democracy, as well as friendly settlement between peoples and the protection and promotion of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious identities of national minorities?
Such institutions as the European Court of Human Rights, Court of Justice, the UN Human Rights Committee, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the International Penal Court have been important instruments in protecting human rights and in institutionalizing international justice. Why should we not form new judiciary institutions to intervene in the globalization process? Dear chairperson, dear participants, the annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Prague has been an interesting scene for the issues handled, as well as the protest demonstrations. A major issue of the meeting was the eradication of poverty. This was not included simply to weaken growing reactions against globalization. Now we see that international organizations of capital, such as the IMF and the World Bank, are also recognizing the fact that the globalization process is also leading to grave inequalities and poverty, so grave as to harm the general operations of the system. “Growing wealth is distributed unjustly.” Instead of developing the tools for fishing for the poorest people of the world, the latter are just tipped for covering mass deaths and injustice of the process itself. It is now a duty to intervene in this process under the light of goals of global equality and justice.
Dear chairperson, the September 11th attack in the USA has highlighted the issue of justice. Mahatma Gandhi’s warning, that an eye for an eye blinds the world, targets everyone. Revenge brings nothing other than new violence. Calls by international human rights NGOs should be listened to. In a culture named Homi’o, the faith is that the human being is above the world and its other creatures. They believe that everything in the world is for human beings. Another culture co-existing with the Homi’o, namely the Mondia, is based on the faith that the most important object is the Earth, followed by plants, because they were the first to be created. Human species are less important because nothing else depends on them. Which culture should we join now?
The best hope we can have for a world under war is peace. Albert Schweitzer says, “to achieve peace, we should expand our circle of compassion to include all creatures”. And I would also quote a line by the poet Nazim Hikmet: “we will bring life to the dead planets, or death will fall upon the Earth”. Again, I would give voice to Nazim Hikmet’s invitation: “Solitary and free, like a tree and fraternity like in a forest this is our yearning”. I hope that this will be a global yearning for humanity. Finally, I should say, if human rights will be written anew after September 11, it should be written for humanity, for freedom, for democracy and for justice again. Thank you for your time.

John Shattuck
Thank you, Akin Birdal. Our next speaker comes to us from another struggle that’s going on as we speak. Min Zin, a Burmese activist, a person who has given a lot of his time, as a young man, to the struggle in Burma. A close associate of Aung San Suu Kyi, and a commentator on the radio and some- one who brings us, I think, a great deal of knowledge about what’s going on inside of Burma. Min Zin.

Min Zin
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, let me express my gratitude to President Havel and the Forum 2000 organizer who invited me, and who made it possible for me to come over here and give my presentation. Also, I feel very honored to be here with all these distinguished guests and people from all around the world. Particularly, especially with these two men, Mr. Ramos-Horta and Mr. John Shattuck. Both of them have won huge admiration inside Burma because of their strong support for the Burmese democracy movement. When I was on the run, when I was hiding inside Burma for almost nine years as an underground activist, running away from the military rulers, I was in my hideout. Most of the time I only had my small, shortwave radio as my company. I happened to listen to their voices, supporting the Burmese democracy movement. Thank you very much.
Let me start my presentation with a cartoon I happened to see when I was hiding. The cartoon shows a woman rushing out of her home, screaming for help. She is crying out, “Please help me! My husband is beating me to death! Please help me,” she pleaded with the passer-by for help. So one guy, who’s
just passing by stopped for a while. And looked at her with a frown and said, “Your husband is beating you? So what? It’s none of my business.” And this guy is trying to go on his own way. And the woman stopped him. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. He’s not only beating me, he’s cursing, he’s damning
all people who pass by here, including you, he’s damning you. Please help me.” And that guy again, again, looks at the woman. “He’s damning me? He’s cursing me? So what? It is none of your business.”
The cartoon came out in 1996, 1997 when there was a heated debate among the Association of South East Asian Nations, the ASEAN, whether they should let Burma in the ASEAN association as a new member. So the supporter of Burma’s inclusion, especially Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, argued that admitting Burma was in line with ASEAN constructive engagement
policy. Which means, non-intervention, non-interference with other sovereign nations’ internal affairs. So, finally, resisting all opposition from Western countries and pro-democracy movement leader Aung San Suu Kyi, ASEAN decided to embrace Burma as its newest member. Unfortunately, since then, Burma has become a country, the only country in the ASEAN that exports its problems conveniently to the other neighboring countries. To the whole region. So let me explain a few examples. Refugees from Burma — there are more than a million refugees — spill into Thailand, still flowing from inside Burma to Thailand. There, more than one hundred thousand internally displaced people are trying to come out of Thailand, trying to come out to the Bangladesh border. Trying to come out to the Indian-Burmese border. So as the production level of heroin in Afghanistan is going down, Burma became the largest heroin producer in the world. Immediately, moreover, Thai officials and many international watch groups accuse the Burmese regime of turning a blind eye on the illicit drug trade. Burma is a main source of the methamphetamine, the speed pill, being smuggled into Thailand. Recently, the Thai drug enforcement agency expects this year, that there will be seven hundred million amphetamine speed pills will be smuggled into Thailand. So this is really a national security problem for the Thai government and Thai people, because the drug using population in Thailand has jumped to over two million. Mostly young people, even in high school, in Thailand, buy amphetamine, smuggled in from Burma.
Thailand recently expressed its concern about Burma waging a drug war against Thailand. Eventually, Thailand and Burma went into conflict. Early this year, fighting broke out between Thai and Burmese troops. And in the fighting, Thailand used two F-15 jet fighters to push Burmese troops back from the Thai soil. Recently, the armed conflict between the two countries was eased by the diplomatic effort, but both countries have made arms purchases. I mean tremendously. The Burmese government has put a lot of money on buying aircraft and modern, technology oriented weapons. Obviously, drug trafficking is not only problem with Thailand. It has its own far-reaching networks. Already this year, U.S. authorities seized one hundred and twenty-six pounds of heroin hidden in a boat, in a container shipped from Burma. Several people got arrested in Thailand in connection with this case. So obviously in the region, Burma has created not only headlines, but also headaches for the regional countries, especially immediate neighbor countries.
On its domestic front, the Burmese government is appropriately described as a bandit regime. They’ve taken about fifty million of our citizens as hostages. Many of my close friends are political prisoners. They have been locked up in solitary confinement, shackled on their legs, for more than decades. Some for twelve years. When I fled to the Thai-Burmese border, four of my friends accompanied me. Two of my friends went back inside Burma to engage in underground political activities. They both were ar- rested for their non-violent activities. One got the death penalty. Another got sixty years — six-zero — years’ imprisonment for his political involvement. Both of them are the same age as me. So Burmese students have suffered a lot of problems, in terms of education, in terms of political repression. Even Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who also won the 1990 election, with over eighty percent of the vote. Even the rank-and-file soldiers voted for her because they really, really hate the military regimes. A handful of generals refused to honor the election result and still keep her under house arrest.
The International Labor Organization, ILO, for the first time in its eighty-one-year history, has asked its members to sanction the Burmese regime for continuing brutal imposition of forced labor on the Burmese and ethnic minority people. There have been crass human rights violations against ethnic minority people. Obviously, brutally violating ethnic minority rights — killing, torture, rape, forced labor, forced relocation, cultural destruction. In ethnic minority areas, people cannot exercise their own language. If you exercise, if you try to teach even Buddhism within your own language, you will be punished. Some monks got killed because they practiced Buddhist teaching in their own language, in northern Burma. So UN agencies keep reporting all these human rights violations.
The worst are in education and in health. In education, the Burmese government, the military government, when it took power in 1988 — now thirteen years — shut down universities and colleges. Eight years out of thirteen years. So for eight years we had no university and no colleges. But on the other hand, they opened military institute for medicine, military institute for technology, military institute for computer science, only for military children and those who would like to join in military. So two levels in the education system, one for military and one for civilians shut down. Also in health, there have been more than five hundred thousand people infected with HIV/AIDS. Criminal negligence on HIV/AIDS is very obvious in Burmese current political arena. The worst thing must be the economic downfall. Since the mid-1990s, the Burmese economy has faced difficulties, in form of increasing trade deficit, hyper-inflation, falling currency and drastic reduction in foreign investment. It’s obvious how these generals could mismanage the economy. They simply mismanaged the economy. So Burma suffers an energy shortage. We don’t have for three hours, even in Rangoon downtown, have energy, electricity, and water.
So it appears the military situation has come to a dead end. So it’s clear also that the regime is unable to recover Burma’s economy without international assistance, without international help. So whatever attempts Burma’s military government have made to recover Burma’s economy are constrained by the domestic political condition. Because of ongoing repression, Western governments and European governments have imposed sanctions on Burma: Imposed trade sanctions, investment sanctions and other diplomatic sanctions. All these sanctions are very effective in pushing Burma’s government to find an exit strategy. Finally, Burma’s government and even regional governments have toned down their noisy claim of non-interference in internal affairs. Recently, their noisy claim of, “don’t interfere, this is none of your business,” — that sort of assertion — became watered down. At least this slogan no longer carries any substance.
Burma has finally agreed that the ILO investigation investigate the use of forced labor in Burma. The International Red Cross, ICRC, has been given access to notorious prisons and labor camps. And European delegations and U.S. delegations are allowed to see Aung San Suu Kyi. She is under house arrest now. More importantly, the UN special envoy, Razali Ismail, plays an significant role in brokering, political talk between the Burmese regime and Aung San Suu Kyi. There has been political talk between Aung San Suu Kyi and Burmese military government since last year. But the important thing that we have to notice is that the current political talk, so far has not yielded to any substantive political improvement in Burma. Because Aung San Suu Kyi is still under house arrest, the talks have become those between captive and captor. She is not allowed to have any voice to explain to the international community, to explain to the people, what is going on with the talks. But on the other hand, the Burmese government is taking maximum kudos by giving minimum assistance. Their idea is to resume, they want the international community to resume humanitarian aid, to lift economic sanctions
against Burma, while on the other hand, they don’t want to prove their real commitment to force a genuine national reconciliation in Burma. However, I think that since the political talks began, the window of opportunity has opened. But whether the Burmese government will pass through that window will depend on a number of factors, including balance of power within the military elite. Because they are not monolithic regimes. They have their own rivalries, conflicts, interests, problems. It depends on the power alignment with the military regimes. And the second thing is the degree to which the international community can coordinate its use of carrots and sticks to move change in Burma.
All in all, I would like to quote the former U.N. Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali: “Sovereignty is no longer absolute. Sovereignty must be kept in its place.” When I was inside Burma hiding, as a runaway, underground activist, I happened to listen to these words. I was so thrilled to hear these words. He’s the director of an organization founded on the principle of sovereign states, comprised solely of sovereign states as voting members, the UN organizations. But these words hit the truth. These words anchor those who suffer under military dictatorship. So if you are serious about these words, by Boutros Boutros-Ghali, I think the multinational community, must multilaterally acknowledge that Burma deserves the concern of everybody’s business. Not “none of my business.” Thank you.

John Shattuck
Thank you very much, Min Zin. We have about fifteen minutes before the coffee break, so we’re going to take just a little bit more time to hear our two concluding speakers. All these stories are very compelling, and I urge our next two speakers to try to keep well within the time limit so that we can hear the stories and move beyond to the discussion. Vincuk Viacorka comes to us from another very difficult and compelling human rights story and place, Belarus. He is the Chairman of the Belarussian Popular Front and a leading opposition politician there. We welcome you and give you the floor for less
than ten minutes if you would, please.

Vincuk Viacorka
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, today we have a kind of review of different regimes around the world. This contributes to theoretical discussions and leads us to some typological conclusions, but at the same time, the conversation should remain practical because the question that arises is, what kind of international influence is effective for institutional changes in our countries? I am from Belarus, the European country, and the critical situation in it shows us that Huntington’s theory sometimes doesn’t work. I will give you one example of how our society and our authorities reacted to the American tragedy. Lukashenko was the only President of a European country who refused to go to the American embassy to express condolences. At the same time, it was a long queue of people, old and young, not only from the capital, to the embassy, to place the candles.
Which are internal factors of the present situation in Belarus? The authoritarian regime has just mutated into a dictatorial one. The Soviet-type economic system has prevailing state property and enacts repression against private business; it has an almost comprehensive list of human rights violations, including arrests and detentions of the opposition leaders (just yesterday my deputy, a young man, was detained and imprisoned for ten days); there is a complete lack of independent TV and radio channels, and strong repression against the printed media; it enforces significant and increasing limitations of the freedom of association and peaceful meetings; and, finally, there have been disappearances of opposition politicians. Recent presidential elections, which took place on September 9, (two days before the events in America) didn’t match the OSCE conditions. Actually, these results are not recognized by European organizations. According to the official figures, Lukashenko had seventy-five percent of votes, but according to an independent monitoring system, the fraud was about, or more than, thirty percent.
Now, more about the external factors of our situation. The official position of European countries and organizations, and that of the United States actually didn’t change. Colin Powell described Lukashenko as the last European dictator. The orientation of official Minsk is rather contradictory to our geographical situation. A week after the American tragedy, Lukashenko received the Libyan minister of defense. A year ago, Lukashenko visited Tripoli and now he is awaiting Qadhafi’s visit. All these visits take place in a secret atmosphere. Other pariah countries are on the agenda of official Minsk contacts as well, especially Iraq and Cuba. Please take into account that today’s Belarus belongs to the “top ten” of weapons’ traders in the world. The official propaganda and political line is based on strong resistance to the West and to NATO expansion to the East. But it is Russia that plays the main external role in the destiny of my country. At least actually. When discussing the relations between state sovereignty and human rights defense, we usually discuss the limits of sovereignty, outside of which the right to interfere on behalf of human rights defense lies. I see some specific features of the problem, concerning my country. For us in Belarus, it is critically important to hear from the surrounding world that we have the indisputable right to be an independent nation. After two centuries of murders, wars and indignities against our people under foreign rule, it seems natural now to seek a reliable guarantee for quiet and prosperous life in the independent state. But now our state remains unique among both the previously existing and newly restored or established post-communist states of Central Eastern Europe. Usually dictatorial or strong authoritarian regimes use isolation for building a self-sufficient state and identify themselves with state independence as an absolute value. But the uniqueness of Belarus lies on the one side in the conservation of an authoritarian communist-style regime and on the other side, in the fact that this regime bases its stability on total orientation towards neighboring Russia, as the big brother.
The official ideology is grounded on Soviet nostalgia and it identifies the former USSR with so-called, newly built Belarus-Russian Union. This ideological and political line is not supported by the younger generation, by more educated and more economically independent people, but it is partially supported by some groups, by older people, by retired officers of the former Soviet army, by inhabitants of rural areas working in coal houses. As a result, two coordinate axis of political space coincide in the heads of many of my compatriots. If you stand for an independent Belarus, it means as a rule that you share democratic values, and respect for human rights and freedoms as a prerequisite for building such a state. Vice versa, if one prefers to see his country as a part of a newly restored Russia-Belarus Union, or Great Russia, this inevitably means that this person sympathizes with the Soviet political system, hates democracy and votes for dictatorship.
Mr. Gauck has mentioned here the dubious effect of export of democracy. In our case, the only neighbor able to export any social system to Belarus is Russia. But frankly speaking, it’s hard to find somebody in my country who believes in democracy export from Russia to any other country. Putin sup- ported Lukashenko using all means, common information space, international support, economic preferences and direct money inflows. Russian officials were the first to recognize the elections as free, fair and transparent, even before the official closing time of polling stations. They contradicted here the mixed monitoring team combined from the representatives of the European Union, Council of Europe, and OSCE. This aspect of the Belarus problem is rather typical of similar regimes. The international community has an indisputable right to make assessments of elections, if they fit the minimal international requirements or not. Usually regimes of this kind try to contest such assessments, convincing their own people and the international community that democracy in Belarus, respectively in Serbia of Milosević, or Iraq or somewhere else, means something else, something other than in the Czech Republic, Sweden, Japan, or the United States. This international attention to the situation in the human rights field and to the elections is a synonym to intervention into their internal affairs, in the language of official propaganda.
Relativism in the evaluation of various political regimes became stronger after September 11. Indeed, Putin is a very necessary person now for the Euro-Atlantic community, to solve immediate problems. But please take into account that Putin bases his influence in his country on the promise to restore Great Russia. Now when the West is eager to see Putin as its ally, the Belarus question faces danger of marginalization. The easiest way for many countries, including EU members, is to agree with the Belarussian status quo and to turn a blind eye to Belarus. In fact, it means silent informal recognition of the regime and, in its turn, the significant limitation of the requirements of this regime to be recognized officially. So we face a serious challenge. We need a favorable international environment to solve our internal problems, but the democratic civil society which is rapidly growing in my country has some advantages. The democratic forces became united and produced a single candidate for presidency. It wasn’t easy, believe me. Dozens of thousands of volunteers participated in the electoral campaign, including a network of observers, despite the repression, thus overcoming their fear. By the way, now hundreds of people lose their jobs and many of them are legally persecuted. Millions of people were reached by independent information, including information about political disappearances, and about the economic situation, so the society rapidly leaves the frames of “homo sovieticus” consciousness, and this is our chance! My proposals. First of all, let’s avoid the temptation to introduce a scale of moral relativity. Evil can’t be relative! Every doubt in the absolute value of human rights inevitably, sometimes step by step, and sometimes suddenly, leads to nonrespect for the human being and for human life. In my country, this development started in 1995 with a forcible crackdown on opposition and peace protests in the parliament hall against an illegal referendum. It started with repression against the media and it has reached its highest point now, when opposition activists started to disappear with no explanations from the authorities that usually like stressing that they follow every step of opposition politicians. Second, every case of a human rights violation should face a strong international reaction, with no difference in which country it takes place. The democratic world community should not recognize the results of fraudulent elections, thus sending a strong message to the society and to the regime of this or that country. And third, newly emerged structures of genuine civil society like NGOs, trade unions and all the channels of information delivery, like an independent press, need strong and consistent international support. I think this kind of international interference is proper for all of us. Thank you.

John Shattuck
Thank you very much, Mr. Viacorka. I think we should take note of the fact that people are speaking with a high degree of courage at events like this, and particularly your own presentation here reflects that. Our last speaker is our student delegate, from the Students’ Forum. Meena Krishnamoorthy, from Australia, who has been active in many social movements, particularly refugee rights, women’s rights, the environment, and indigenous rights, including the Sydney University Amnesty International. Can I recognize you for a few concluding remarks before we take our coffee break? Thank you.