 |
 |
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
Fifth Assembly - Opening Plenary Session
Opening Address:
Kateryna Yushchenko, First Lady of Ukraine
April 6, 2008
Introduction
President Alejandro Toledo, Chairman Ayo Obe, your Excellencies, dear friends and colleagues, dear defenders of freedom around the world.
It is my honor and pleasure to welcome you to Ukraine, a 16-year old country with a 7000 year history. I truly hope that you, our guests representing 110 countries, will have an opportunity to tour our ancient city, meet its people, experience its culture, breath the air of a nation rediscovering its independence and its identity.
Our country has gone through so many changes in the past few years that is astonishing — and what more vivid example than that this Soviet-style building, the former Lenin Museum, is now hosting the World Movement for Democracy?! I truly thank my many friends at the National Endowment for Democracy for choosing Ukraine to host this historic assembly.
Ukrainian History
I know that each of your countries has its own unique and noble history, sometimes valiant and sometimes oppressed, sometimes glorious and sometimes tragic, its own heroes and villains, its own aspirations, successes and defeats.
Ukraine ’s history is one of constant battle for independence and freedom. We are a country that has enjoyed only a few years of independence since the days of Kyiv Rus’. We are the country of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who began our fight for independence in the 17 th century, and Ivan Mazepa, who continued it in the 18 th. In 1710, our Cossack leader Pylyp Orlyk wrote Europe’s first constitution, guaranteeing for the first time the right to directly elect the country’s leader.
In the 19th century, when our people were serfs and our language was banned, Taras Shevchenko wrote revolutionary poetry calling for Ukraine’s freedom and an end to serfdom.
In 1918, we finally saw a real chance at independence and created our own state, but unlike some of our neighbors, we were unable to secure it, and we were subjugated under the communist empire.
Holodomor and Repressions
During the Soviet period, Ukraine experienced one of the most horrible genocides in human history – the Ukrainian Holodomor. In the period from 1932 to 1933, the Soviet regime closed our borders and violently confiscated all the food, killing all resistors. Within a period of less than two years, approximately 10 million people died, 25,000 people per day, more than half of them children. The Holodomor was a planned genocide intended to wipe out the Ukrainian identity and culture, and to eliminate any resistance to Soviet dominance.
The famine was followed by the annihilation of Ukraine’s intelligentsia — its poets, writers, artists, scientists and teachers — in 1937-38.
We strongly believe that if the world had not ignored the tragic events of Ukraine’s Holodomor in 1932-33 and the repressions of the late 1930s, many subsequent genocides – Nazi Germany, countries of Africa, Cambodia, the Balkans, and the most recent one in Darfur, may not have been possible. We are grateful to the nations who have recognized our Holodomor as a genocide, and we are, as a nation and a people, committed to fighting genocide everywhere and anywhere in the world.
Continued Struggle
Despite the genocide, despite all these defeats and subjugation, our freedom fighters continued their struggle. Millions were sent to the system of Soviet concentration camps - gulags. In the 1960s, a new generation of dissidents raised their voices, calling for human and national rights, only to be imprisoned in the gulag again.
But the gulag brought together many of the most courageous and talented men and women from throughout the Soviet Union. And their voices were heard in Washington, in London and around the world. And a huge movement, a tide, for freedom began, first in Poland, then the Baltic countries and East Germany, then throughout Central and Eastern Europe. And our country became finally, gloriously, independent in 1991.
But, independence did not bring immediate political or economic successes. Ukraine experienced massive inequity in the distribution of income. Its political system continued to be dominated by the same oppressive, corrupt people of the past, communist party members who changed their titles but not their means or ends.
Orange Revolution
Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, but the Ukrainian people gained their freedom in 2004. The Orange Revolution was an extraordinary explosion of hope, an uprising of the human spirit. In a brief moment, hundreds of thousands, millions of people, young and old, students and pensioners, workers and intellectuals, from many parts of the country, rose from their knees, they came together to say “enough” to injustice, to the repression of free speech and the flouting of the rule of law, to biased state-controlled media and to vote fraud.
But what made the Orange Revolution remarkable was its positive spirit, its laughter and its humanity. I personally believe that God was present in every person and every action during those cold, snowy 18 days. A nation that had for generations been subjugated, defeated, murdered, found the strength to sing songs of freedom, to spend nights in tents sharing experiences and talking about democracy, to donate their apartments, their money, food and clothes to the revolution.
When the so-called opposition to the protesters was transported in by the authorities, they were received with kindness, warm words and blankets, and hot tea. And many of those who were sent in to break up the demonstrations ended up joining them. As did the pop stars and poets, priests and athletes, police and soldiers.
Thousands of the demonstrators spent the cold nights in this very building.
We are truly grateful for the international solidarity we felt, for all the countries and NGOs and individuals throughout the world who supported us at that crucial moment in our history.
Ukraine Today
But, as all leaders of popular demonstrations — Poland’s Solidarity, South Africa’s struggle against apartheid, the Philippines struggle against dictatorship, and others — know, unifying people in protest is one kind of struggle, but creating democratic institutions, a strong economy, a rule of law, a civil society and a political culture that protects and realizes their dreams is another.
Some people thought that, after risking their lives on Independence Square during the Orange Revolution, the country would change overnight. That justice, rule of law and prosperity would suddenly appear.
But, as I often emphasize, the Orange Revolution did not bring change, it brought the opportunity to make change. The Revolution did not , and could not, replace a repressive regime with a benevolent dictator who would single-handedly raise salaries, provide housing, education and medicine, wipe out corruption, ensure fair and unbiased media, appoint honest judges and regional officials.
It provided each citizen of our country with a voice in its future development, with the chance to become involved in solving the many difficult problems plaguing us. With the right to obtain information and give information, to read and write and criticize. With the right to form organizations, start businesses, to travel and learn. To be true citizens.
Our media is now free and it is flourishing, though it is not always fair and unbiased. It too often reflects the political views of its owners. But this will change with growing professionalism, with more competition, and with a public that is more aware and discriminating.
We now hold free and fair elections. An increasing number of politicians – though far from all – are beginning to put the interests of the state before their own personal ones.
Our civil society is growing and gaining maturity. NGOs of all kinds – political and non-political – are thriving and addressing issues such as government accountability, analyzing public opinion, working on civic education, preserving our language, history and culture.
My particular area of interest is to encourage people and NGOs to become involved in addressing Ukraine’s pressing social problems – improving education, providing needed medical care, integrating the disabled, supporting our museums, literature, and arts. For decades, Ukrainians, like all people in the former USSR, were told that this was not their concern, that the state was responsible for every social need. I am pleased that today we have a burgeoning charitable movement and a growing sense of corporate responsibility.
Conclusion
Ukraine today is a beautiful, complicated and inspiring country. It is a democracy. And it is changing every day, in every way. Some people feel this change now, others will feel it later. For some the change is exhilarating, for others it is frightening and hard. But for the first time in our history, we take pride in our language and history and culture, we have our independence and our freedom and our identity.
This weekend, the United States remembers the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King. In his sermon, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution”, he said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle is right — no lie can live forever. We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right — Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again. We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right — “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim unknown stands God, Within the shadow keeping watch above his own.”
And in the 19th century, Ukraine’s revolutionary poet Taras Shevchenko said, “Struggle, and ye shall overcome the foe; For God shall support you in battle’s throe; His strength is on your side, and freedom stands With justice on the threshold of your lands!”
Now, my dear friends, tonight I wish you a wonderful dinner. Then tomorrow and the day after, I wish you the opportunity to learn many new skills and generate many creative and innovative ideas that will enable you to return to your countries and stimulate revolutions, little and big, to promote democracy, human rights, civil society, and freedom, and to overcome your hardships.
May God bless you and your nations.
Opening Session Speakers:
Keynote Address by Myroslava Gongadze
Keynote Address by Maina Kiai
||
|| Site map ||