Human Rights Teachers

Thank you very much.

Good morning Minister Rand, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. I especially want to greet those of you who are teachers of human rights. You have a vitally important role to play. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Estonian Institute for Human Rights on its fast-approaching 10th anniversary, which very appropriately will take place next Tuesday, on Human Rights Day.

Ms. Haruoja, I wish you and your colleagues at the Institute continued success and many more decades of fruitful work in promoting human rights in Estonia and abroad.

It is an honor to address a seminar that focuses on a topic that both my country and I personally consider to be of utmost importance. You, ladies and gentlemen, are in the business of securing and spreading freedom in a world that thirsts for it. That is what the business of human rights education is all about. People have died for this freedom.

I think that it is critical to place our discussion of human rights within the context of the experiences of the past century. The twentieth century has witnessed a great experiment in governance -- especially here in Europe. In the last century we tested an astonishing array of possibilities for organizing our governments, our economies, and our societies. Imperialism, Fascism, Communism, and democracy have all been put through the test.

Now, the results of this far-reaching experiment are in, and they are unambiguous. The only system that provides the basis for long-term peace, prosperity and national success is one that trusts free people and free markets. All other approaches are simply recipes for short or long-term failure.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is no accident of history that, by any measure of economic well-being, the countries at the top of the list are those that give the greatest trust to free people and free markets. It is no mystery of the science of climate that year after year the countries whose people require billions of dollars in food-aid are those whose people are the most restricted in their political and economic choices and are the most closed off from the world.

The people of North Korea or of the Taliban's Afghanistan are not less industrious or less intelligent than others. But, they are less free and this dooms them and their countries to needless suffering.

You, ladies and gentlemen, are in the business of securing and spreading freedom in a world that thirsts for it. In so doing, you are a critical element in creating successful, vibrant societies. We must never again fall into the trap of believing that human rights and human freedom are a luxury to be given to us by governments after their supposedly more essential objectives are achieved.

Human rights in this century will continue to have two battles to fight. The first is external. The second is internal.

I mentioned the last century's experiment in governance and its results. There are few who can question those results, but many who do not like them. Some of those who do not like them are obvious. They include the leaders who will not leave.

Those are the leaders who benefit from power and have no incentive to adopt genuinely a system that would permit their people to overturn the privileges of the leadership. Not all the nations that emerged from the Soviet Empire have been as fortunate in their subsequent leadership as Estonia has been.

When one looks to the east from Tallinn one sees there is still much to do to encourage the growth of human rights even on this continent. But, despite the damage they do to their own people and their own nations, this group is not currently a serious threat to our freedoms. That threat comes from a new authoritarian challenge, one that has concluded that its desire for power can never be achieved while our societies flourish.

Let us be clear about the agenda of the Usama bin-ladens of the world.

This movement and the other groups like his are political insurgents with a political agenda. Usama is no respected Islamic thinker. He has neither the history nor the credentials to claim to speak for Islam. He has a three decade long history as a violent political insurgent committed to one end -- the creation of violent, repressive regimes in the Muslim world that exclude all contact or interchange with outside ideas or peoples. The Taliban's Afghanistan was a clear representation of what this movement has in mind. This repression is clothed in Islam, but it reflects no religious motivation.

This might be of no more than academic interest to you except for one terrible fact. This group of Middle Eastern totalitarians has come to the same conclusion as Hitler and Stalin came to. That conclusion is their power can never be secure as long as the people they repress can see the alternative our free societies offer.

Usama has concluded that he cannot seize and hold power unless our societies are destroyed. I recall the statement of one of the leaders of Hamas. In reply to a question about what actions we could take to end Hamas' attacks he said, "We do not attack in order for you to give us something. We attack you to eliminate you."

What does this mean? It means ladies and gentlemen, that we face an enemy who will continue to try to kill us as long as we are free. He will use the free nature of our societies to infiltrate us and strike us. Our challenge for many years to come will be to fight this new group of totalitarians while preserving our freedoms at home and helping to create it abroad. All the long-term advantages are on our side. Freedom and human rights are contagious. But, our opponents are clever, relentless and violent. Those of us in the business of freedom will have to encourage our people and remind them of the stakes in this struggle during many difficult hours.

No less important, however, is the internal work we must do to preserve freedom. Many years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt warned us that a failure to protect the civil rights of any of our citizens opened up a weakness in the armor of a free society.

As you here in Estonia can testify, achieving a functioning democracy is a long, hard climb up a steep mountain. The fall from that peak can be achieved much more quickly and easily, but the end result is fatal. In this new era, we need to face new challenges to our freedoms. Do not believe for a minute that standing for human rights will always be popular.

Recently, for example, the leadership in my own country had to confront highly popular religious leaders who used the war on terrorism to attack Islam. Similarly, we have had to take serious action at home to protect Muslim-Americans who were unfairly targeted by hate crimes after the Sept. 11 attacks. Human rights are not restricted in our societies to those who look like we do, believe as we do, or speak our own language. Genuine work in human rights has to rise above the widely held prejudices even of democratic societies.

Here in Estonia, it seems to me the internal work on human rights will probably have at least three agenda points: dealing with the past, continuing integration, and preparing for diversity.

First, let me say a word about dealing with painful issues of the past. This is going to be hard work. Many would like to bury the past, most because of the pain they experienced, a few because of the shame they fear. You will not be popular if you address this issue fairly in your work. But, a society that does not cleanse the wounds of the past will be infected by them.

A democracy that does not examine problems of its past opens the way for its own destruction in the future. The old enemies of freedom hope to cover up their past acts in order to disguise their return.

The second agenda item is to continue the successful process of integrating all those who live in Estonia fully into its democracy and economy. I have no advice to offer on this point. The process seems to be moving along. But, for those of you on the front lines of this activity it is probably wise to note what inertia had to be overcome to create some momentum on integration. Your support for it will be of significance.

Finally, as educators, your first obligation is to the future.

You are the people who prepare the next generation for its challenges. It seems to me that Estonia has had to leap into the world in the last decade. After fifty years of totalitarian isolation, built on top of a couple of centuries of geographic isolation, Estonia has emerged into the middle of a very diverse and fast moving world. At the same time, the world inevitably will come to Estonia.

People who do not look, talk, or behave like Estonians are going to be more and more part of the landscape over the next few decades. The Europe of today is far more diverse than the Europe Estonia left fifty years ago. This is something that can be tremendously positive, but it is something that people need to understand and to prepare for. These new people (whether they are visitors, workers, or immigrants) will be entering a society they do not understand with sensitivities Estonians do not know. Learning about those who are different from us is not natural and does take effort. You can and should be part of that effort.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you a successful conference, but more important, I wish you success in your work at promoting and securing our freedom. Thank you for your attention.