Human Rights and Responsibilities: The Power of the Powerless

"Centralization as a system is inconsistent with non-violent structure of society." – Mohandas Gandhi

Cuban regime equated Liu Xiaobo with Cuban dissidents like Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet

Upon learning that the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo had won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize the official press of the Cuban regime equated Liu Xiaobo with Cuban dissidents like Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and Librado Linares on the island and declared the Nobel Prize “anti-Nobel”. [1] It is not surprising that the Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese dictatorships or that the regime in Venezuela are not attending the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. However, according to Amnesty International: Afghanistan, Colombia, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sudan, Tunisia, and Ukraine have declined to attend according to the Nobel Committee due to a “combination of political pressure and economic blackmail” exerted by China [2].

On Tuesday, December 7, 2010 in Stockholm, Sweden the 2010 Nobel Laureate in Literature Mario Vargas Llosa described the present challenges facing the international community in his Nobel Lecture: “Every day, all over the world, countless victims are sacrificed by those who feel they possess absolute truths. With the collapse of totalitarian empires, we believed that living together, peace, pluralism, and human rights would gain the ascendancy and the world would leave behind holocausts, genocides, invasions, and wars of extermination. None of that has occurred. New forms of barbarism flourish, incited by fanaticism, and with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, we cannot overlook the fact that any small faction of crazed redeemers may one day provoke a nuclear cataclysm.”[3]

The French philosopher, André Glucksmann, in his essay “The Velvet Philosophical Revolution” described both how Western intellectuals had believed that the world was “fated” to be Communist but when it imploded intellectuals abandoned their belief in the inevitability of communism and replaced it with other inevitable visions “the triumph of universal democracy” and “the end of history” in a “peaceful postmodern promised land.”[4] There is nothing inevitable about the course of history because human beings have free will. This is demonstrated by the life of Mario Vargas Llosa, who as a young man was a Marxist and sympathizer of the Cuban revolution who later became disillusioned with communism and dictatorship recognizing the desirability of democracy. Vargas Llosa had been free to choose and also to change his mind when observing the results of the model he sympathized with.

Mario Vargas Llosa went on to explain in the Nobel Lecture that his struggle against the Peruvian dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori was based in his “conviction that a dictatorship represents absolute evil for a country, a source of brutality and corruption and profound wounds that take a long time to close, poison the nation’s future, and create pernicious habits and practices that endure for generations and delay democratic reconstruction. This is why dictatorships must be fought without hesitation, with all the means at our disposal, including economic sanctions. It is regrettable that democratic governments, instead of setting an example by making common cause with those, like the Damas de Blanco in Cuba, the Venezuelan opposition, or Aung San Suu Kyi and Liu Xiaobo, who courageously confront the dictatorships they endure, often show themselves complaisant not with them but with their tormenters. Those valiant people, struggling for their freedom, are also struggling for ours.”[5]

Centralizing power into international structures after they failed at the national level has not brought about the results desired.

The Historical Context

In the aftermath of WWII with the horrors of the Holocaust in Germany still fresh; Josef Stalin still in power in the Soviet Union having butchered millions of civilians in peacetime and allying with Adolph Hitler to divide Poland and start the war; and Mahatma Gandhi recently assassinated a few months earlier on January 30, 1948 while on a walk at Birla Bhavan by Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse. The middle of the twentieth century was in the midst of a profound spiritual and moral darkness.

It was in the aftermath and in the midst of these horrors that the Latin Americans took the lead in pressing for an international bill of rights. Led by Chileans, Panamanians, and Cubans representing democratic and constitutional republics, they wrote the first drafts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Latin American region led the efforts to produce a universal human rights declaration. The final document was recognized by Cuban diplomats as one that would have been “accepted by that generous spirit who was the apostle of our independence: Jose Marti, the hero who -- as he turned his homeland into a nation -- gave us forever this generous rule: ‘With everyone and for the good of everyone.’”[6]

The nations of the world horrified by the horrors of the holocaust and the brutality of war achieved a consensus and signed the thirty articles that would make up the Declaration on December 10, 1948. Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School said that “it is fair to refer to Latin America as the forgotten crucible of the universal human rights idea.”[7]

Nevertheless, since the signing of the Declaration six decades ago in 1948 genocide and political mass killings have not ended but continued in huge numbers. More than 72 million have died as a result of government organized mass killings. Two members of the UN Security Council (China and the Soviet Union) alone accounted for 57 million of the dead post 1945. Ironically the 1936 Soviet Constitution offered a long list or rights and freedoms that were completely ignored in practice.

Not lived up to its utopian promise

Mary Robinson who was United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 1998, when the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was celebrated and now co-chairs the new organization, Agenda for Human Rights funded by the Swiss government says the world has not lived up to the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “A reality that shames us frankly, that is not acceptable. If the world had taken seriously the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we would have a world where no parents would see their children waking up in the morning crying of hunger, dying from preventable diseases," said Robinson.[8] "There would not be more than half a million mothers dying giving birth. We would have a different world and it would be a much more secure world, of course."[9] Can a utopia be achieved where no child would ever go hungry or die from a preventable disease from a document that lists human rights?

Economic rights as a siren call to government control

Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights from 2004 to 2008 is quoted in the December 22, 2008 edition of The Nation magazine article “The Battle for Human Rights” by Barbara Crossette stating: “[The West] has been the champion of civil liberties--of freedom from fear--but freedom from want was meant to be achieved by a healthy marketplace not a place for governments to play too large a role. The developing countries--and whether they are doing that in bad faith or good faith is not for me to pass judgment--are doing exactly the opposite.” Both Louise Arbour and The Nation argue that the West is mistaken in this emphasis but it was not always so.

In the 1920s and 1930s Europe sought leaders to address economic problems and made the same argument that many are making again today that economic development should take precedent over civil and political rights. The answers were to be found in Stalin’s industrialization and agricultural collectivization programs in the Soviet Union and Hitler’s fascist economic program which dramatically reduced unemployment, a government guaranteed minimum standard of living and the government directed building of the first freeway system in the world: the autobahn. In Italy Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship claimed that by 1935 three quarters of Italian businesses were under government control. Nevertheless ignoring civil and political rights to accelerate or focus on economic development left Europe a burnt out cinder as these totalitarian regimes murdered tens of millions and plunged the continent into another world war.

There is also ample evidence that to achieve sustained economic and social development over the long run depends on a system based in the rule of law and respect by government and the citizenry for fundamental rights and duties within a sound moral-ethical framework. There can be a huge explosion of economic growth in the short term as was seen in the German example but in the long run it is not sustainable unless backed up with an engaged and responsible citizenry and a sound political base as was the case for Germany under Konrad Adenauer and the economical miracle that saw Germany’s economy rise out of the rubble of WWII.

The continuing call for more government

The call for more laws and more government to address these problems from the League of Nations following WWI to the United Nations following WWII and now the International Criminal Court in light of the continuing genocides today has led to another round of new laws and new institutions to attend to old evils. Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Investigator on Torture, makes the case for an international human rights court stating: “We would go beyond the powers of regional courts, by in particular taking into account that in a global world, we have global responsibilities that go beyond State responsibilities but also holding accountable intergovernmental organizations or transnational corporations or others that violate human rights.”[10]

The argument is being made for world government. Thomas Fleming in The Morality of Everyday Life asks: “If rights are claims to be enforced by government, then what are ‘international human rights’ if not the theoretical justification for world government?”[11] It has been demonstrated that governments have a history of mass killing. Why should one think that a world government would be any better? Mahatma Gandhi looked upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although it appeared to be doing good by minimizing exploitation, it did the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality.[12] Furthermore Gandhi believed that: “Centralization as a system is inconsistent with [a] non-violent structure of society.”[13] One can draw the conclusion that world government would be taking that inconsistency to its greatest extreme.

Civil Society and Individuals

Gandhi feared the expansion of the state and with good reason, but he also believed in the power of individuals, families, and local communities to live in freedom and expand freedom. Over the past sixty years we have seen how individuals and non-governmental organizations have defended human rights and exposed the crimes of the State. This has been carried out in a decentralized and non-violent fashion. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Human Rights First, Reporters without Borders, and other non-governmental organizations have operated at the international level in collaboration with national human rights organizations. At the national and local level groups of individuals organizing and challenging brutal and murderous regimes such as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina against a military junta that disappeared 30,000 Argentines in 1970s and early 1980s and today in totalitarian Cuba the Ladies in White demand freedom for their imprisoned relatives with open non-violent displays of defiance pressuring dictatorships to meet their demands.

The road to making human rights a reality

Prior to his assassination Mahatma Gandhi responded to the 1948 United Nations Committee charged with drafting what would later become the human rights charter stating: “All rights to be deserved and preserved come from duty well done. Thus the very right to live accrues to us only when we do the duty of citizenship of the world. From this fundamental statement perhaps it is easy enough to define the duties of man and woman and correlate every right to some corresponding duty to be first performed. Every other right can be shown to be a usurpation hardly worth fighting for.”[14]

Gandhi’s idea on liberty and license is in sync with traditional Christianity that you do not have a right to do anything you want but to do what is good: “Liberty cannot be secured merely by proclaiming it. An atmosphere of liberty must be created within us. Liberty is one thing, and license another. Many a time we confuse license for liberty and lose the latter. License leads one to selfishness whereas liberty guides one to supreme good. License destroys society, liberty gives it life. In license propriety is sacrificed; in liberty it is fully cherished."[15]

Furthermore Gandhi’s experiments with truth and obtaining true freedom are similar to catholic moral teaching and impact his concept of what are rights: “Fundamental rights can only be those rights the exercise of which is not only in the interest of the citizens but that of the whole world… Rights cannot be divorced from duties. This is how satyagraha was born, for I was always striving to decide what my duty was.”[16]

Obtaining real freedom is within you denying vices, resisting temptations, and engaging in self denial a person obtains liberty and avoids what Gandhi described above as license which Catholic teaching below describes as resulting in slavery: “In proportion as a man habitually yields to intemperance or some other vice, his freedom diminishes and he does in a true sense sink into slavery. He continues responsible in causa for his subsequent conduct, though his ability to resist temptation at the time is lessened. On the other hand, the more frequently a man restrains mere impulse, checks inclination towards the pleasant, puts forth self-denial in the face of temptation, and steadily aims at a virtuous life, the more does he increase in self-command and therefore in freedom.”[17]

Judith Brown in Gandhi and Human Rights: In Search of True Humanity quotes Gandhi’s response to a list of human rights sent to him by H.G. Wells where he countered that it would be better to: “Begin with a charter of Duties of Man…and I promise the rights will follow as spring follows winter. I write from experience. As a young man I began life by seeking to assert my rights and I soon discovered I had none not even over my wife. So I began by discovering performing my duty by my wife, my children, friends, companions and society and I find today that I have greater rights, perhaps than any living man I know.”[18]

Brown concludes that: “This tradition could produce something that superficially looks like a ‘right,’ such as the apparent right to resist an unjust king. On deeper exploration it is clear that this resistance is not a right but application of duty, the duty of subjects to remove a ruler who is failing in his particular duty to guard his people and uphold the moral order."[19]

Resistance to evil, although it may appear as an act of rebellion when dealing with an unjust ruler, it is in reality engaging in one’s duty. In the same manner that battling your own vices and appetites may appear to be self-denial but in reality is an act of self-liberation. .The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a guideline that can help us on our path toward justice and truth but it is not the road itself.[20] Although this guideline terrifies dictators because it allows individuals a chance to read in a succinct format a basic outline of their fundamental rights and challenge whatever unjust paradigm the regime is trying to impose. Article 29 of the declaration informs that all have duties to the community but without further defining the rights and freedoms of their family, friends, countrymen, and fellow human beings it can easily be manipulated as a call to obedience to the governmental authorities. The misery experienced over the past sixty years serves as a challenge to due one’s duty in defense of what is right and a warning of what awaits if it is shirked.

There are choices to be made: freedom or repression; empathy or apathy; compassion or cruelty and they will have a profound impact on human existence. During the 1990s in the heart of Europe the world saw that a country that chose freedom, empathy and compassion could have a “velvet divorce” and both new nations would continue along a path of development and freedom while at the same time in the Balkans others chose repression, apathy and cruelty as policy and old communist apparatchiks became ultranationalist war criminals.

Erazim V. Kohák in his book Jan Patočka: philosophy and selected writings refers to Patočka’s “solidarity of the shaken” as a community freed “from the preoccupation with the pursuits of peace and prosperity that inevitably lead to war and turn it instead to the pursuit of the Good, the care of the soul” that is “living with a clear conscience, living in truth, or in far older terms, seeking first the Kingdom of God.”[21]

Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, Liu Xiaobo in China, the Ladies in White in Cuba and the student movement in Venezuela have all demonstrated this “solidarity of the shaken.” Their respective commitments to pursue the good and living with a clear conscience have led them all to suffer great persecution but that is the price they are paying in “assuming the responsibility of freedom” and in exercising that responsibility challenging tyrannical regimes.

Liu Xiaobo has no guns, bombs, or weapons and he does not recognize the Chinese regime as an enemy but nevertheless the Chinese communist leadership fears him. They have sentenced him to 11 years in prison because of his writings in favor of democratic reforms within the system and are now expending both economic and political capital in an effort to diminish this Chinese dissident’s international stature. The same kind of reaction has been observed against these other leaders and movements mentioned in the previous paragraph in their respective countries. These fearful reactions by despotic regimes to non-violent adversaries “living in truth offers a measure of what former Czech dissident and play write Vaclav Havel has referred to as the “power of the powerless.”

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[1] Diario de Cuba “El régimen arremete contra Liu Xiaobo y Vargas Llosa” Agencias - DDC 08-10-2010 -http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/el-regimen-arremete-contra-liu-xiaobo-y-vargas-llosa

[2] Amnesty Internacional “Nineteen countries turn down invite to Nobel Peace Prize ceremony” December 7, 2010 http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/nineteen-countries-turn-down-invitation-nobel-peace-prize-ceremony-2010-12-07

[3] Vargas Llosa, Mario “In Praise of Reading and Fiction” Nobel Lecture December 7, 2010 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2010/vargas_llosa-lecture_en.html

[4] Glucksmann, André “The Velvet Philosophical Revolution” City Journal Winter 2010 Vol. 20 No. 1 http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_1_velvet-revolution.html

[5] Vargas Llosa, Mario “In Praise of Reading and Fiction” Nobel Lecture December 7, 2010 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2010/vargas_llosa-lecture_en.html

[6] Cisneros y Bonnel, Guy Perez “In the Spirit of Bolivar and Marti” The Miami Herald Dec.10, 1998 http://fiu.edu/~fcf/bolivarmartispirit.html

[7]Glendon, Mary Ann The Forgotten Crucible: The Latin American Influence on the Universal Human Rights Idea Harvard Human Rights Journal Vol. 16 pg. 27 2003 http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss16/glendon.shtml

[8] Schlein, Lisa “Rights Experts Push for World Court of Human Rights” Voice of America Dec. 6, 2008 http://voanews.com/english/2008-12-06-voa21.cfm

[9] Schlein, Lisa “Rights Experts Push for World Court of Human Rights” Voice of America Dec. 6, 2008 http://voanews.com/english/2008-12-06-voa21.cfm

[10] Schlein, Lisa “Rights Experts Push for World Court of Human Rights” Voice of America Dec. 6, 2008 http://voanews.com/english/2008-12-06-voa21.cfm

[11] Fleming, Thomas The Morality of Everyday Life pg. 229

[12] The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi http://www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap26.htm

[13] The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi http://www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap26.htm

[14] Parel, Anthony J. editor Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule Lexington Books 2000 pg. 10

[15] Parel, Anthony J. editor Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule Lexington Books 2000 pg. 10

[16] Parel, Anthony J. editor Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule Lexington Books 2000 pg. 10

[17] Catholic Encyclopedia Free Will New Advent http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06259a.htm

[18] Brown, Judith M.“Gandhi and Human Rights: In Search of True Humanity” Parel, Anthony J. editor Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule Lexington Books 2000 pg. 89

[19] Brown, Judith M.“Gandhi and Human Rights: In Search of True Humanity” Parel, Anthony J. editor Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule Lexington Books 2000 pg. 89

[20] Fleming, Thomas The Morality of Everyday Life pg. 234

[21] Kohák, Erazim V. Jan Patočka: philosophy and selected writings University of Chicago Press, 1989 pg. 131

[22] Havel, Václav The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, edited by John Keane, (London: Hutchinson,1985). http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/index.php?sec=6&id=2&kat=&from=6&setln=2

John Lennon: Musician & Activist for Non-Violence

I don't believe in violent revolution. Yoko stated it very well which is: 'Violent revolutionaries are playing the same establishment game.' - John Lennon


"The militant revolutionaries, ask them to show you one revolution that turned out to be what it promised militantly. Lets take Russia, France anywhere that had it. What they do is smash the place down and they build it up again. The people who build it up hang on to it then they become the establishment. Now you guys are going to be the establishment in a few years. Its not worth knocking it down cause its convenient to have the rooms and the machinery." - John Lennon



"The thing is to protest but protest non-violently because violence begets violence. You know if you run around wild you get smacked that's it. Its the law of the universe. they've got all the weapons and got all the money and they know how to fight violence because they've been doing it for thousands of years suppressing us. The only thing they don't know about is nonviolence and humor." - John Lennon



"There’s nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you." - John Lennon

Video play list of John Lennon's music, life and times.

Amnesty International: China must end human rights crackdown in advance of Nobel award

8 December 2010

Amnesty International is today calling on the Chinese government to end its intensifying crackdown on Chinese human rights activists ahead of the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony in Oslo on 10 December.

Amnesty International and Chinese human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases of people being detained, interrogated, or arrested in advance of the event honouring jailed Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo.



“The Chinese government’s travel restrictions target not just human rights defenders, but also ordinary travellers who somehow trigger the government’s suspicion,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General. “This reaction violates Chinese law as well as China’s international obligations and constitutes a serious breakdown in the rule of law.”

Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo is currently serving an 11-year sentence for “inciting subversion of state power" for his part as the leading author behind “Charter 08”, a manifesto calling for the recognition of fundamental human rights in China.

Liu Xiaobo has consistently maintained that the sentence violates both China's own constitution and basic human rights, but, like many others in China who have chosen to speak out, he has been severely punished.

He is just one of thousands of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience currently being held in China. Among the recent cases that Amnesty International has highlighted are:

• Liu Xianbin, a prominent Sichuan democracy activist detained since 28 June 2010 on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power”.
• Gao Zhisheng, named one of China’s “top 10 lawyers” by the Ministry of Justice in 2001, he was later arrested and tortured for his human rights activities and has been “missing” since being taken by police from his home in Shaanxi Province on 4 February 2009.
• Tan Zuoren, an environmental activist critical of the high death rate in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake due to substandard construction, he was later convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” for commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre and sentenced to a five-year prison sentence.
• Hairat Niyaz, a Uighur journalist convicted on charges of “endangering state security” in the wake of the 2009 Urumqi riots, he is now serving a 15-year sentence and being held incommunicado.
• Dhondup Wangchen, a Tibetan filmmaker arrested, tortured and held without charge for more than a year before being sentenced in a secret trial to six years’ imprisonment for “inciting separatism”.

“The Chinese government should release Liu Xiaobo and all the other prisoners of conscience,” said Salil Shetty. “They should uphold internationally recognised human rights standards, many of which are enshrined in their own constitution.”

The recent crackdown also coincides with a concerted campaign by Chinese authorities to disrupt the Nobel awards ceremony.

Nobel rules require the winner or his or her immediate family to personally accept the prize. Liu Xiaobo’s enforced absence means that for the first time since 1938, the peace prize will not be awarded at the ceremony.

Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia, could have collected the award for him, but she has been detained by Chinese authorities and is currently under house arrest in Beijing. She is unable to move about freely and has not been allowed to be in contact with friends or family for nearly two months.

Chinese authorities have also pressured other countries to boycott the ceremony. However, despite a campaign of political and economic pressure, only 18 countries have declined the invitation to the ceremony.

“The Chinese government should be celebrating this global recognition of a Chinese writer and activist,” said Salil Shetty. “Instead, the government’s very public tantrum has generated even more critical attention inside and outside China – and, ironically, emphasized the significance of Liu Xiaobo’s message of respect for human rights.”

ENDS/


Public Document
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For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566 or email: press@amnesty.org
International Secretariat, Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW, UK



Thomas Yocum
Asia-Pacific Press Officer

Amnesty International
International Secretariat
1 Easton Street
London WC1X 0DW

desk: +44 (0) 20 7413 5871
mobile: +44 (0) 7904 398 103
e-mail: thomas.yocum@amnesty.org

Mario Vargas Llosa: In praise of reading and fiction

Some compatriots accused me of being a traitor, and I was on the verge of losing my citizenship when, during the last dictatorship, I asked the democratic governments of the world to penalize the regime with diplomatic and economic sanctions, as I have always done with all dictatorships of any kind, whether of Pinochet, Fidel Castro, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Imams in Iran, apartheid in South Africa, the uniformed satraps of Burma (now called Myanmar). - Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Lecture December 7, 2010

Nobel Lecture December 7, 2010
An excerpt (full text here)

Since every period has its horrors, ours is the age of fanatics, of suicide terrorists, an ancient species convinced that by killing they earn heaven, that the blood of innocents washes away collective affronts, corrects injustices, and imposes truth on false beliefs. Every day, all over the world, countless victims are sacrificed by those who feel they possess absolute truths. With the collapse of totalitarian empires, we believed that living together, peace, pluralism, and human rights would gain the ascendancy and the world would leave behind holocausts, genocides, invasions, and wars of extermination. None of that has occurred. New forms of barbarism flourish, incited by fanaticism, and with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, we cannot overlook the fact that any small faction of crazed redeemers may one day provoke a nuclear cataclysm. We have to thwart them, confront them, and defeat them. There aren’t many, although the tumult of their crimes resounds all over the planet and the nightmares they provoke overwhelm us with dread. We should not allow ourselves to be intimidated by those who want to snatch away the freedom we have been acquiring over the long course of civilization. Let us defend the liberal democracy that, with all its limitations, continues to signify political pluralism, coexistence, tolerance, human rights, respect for criticism, legality, free elections, alternation in power, everything that has been taking us out of a savage life and bringing us closer – though we will never attain it – to the beautiful, perfect life literature devises, the one we can deserve only by inventing, writing, and reading it. By confronting homicidal fanatics we defend our right to dream and to make our dreams reality.


Noble Prize in Literature lecture in Spanish

In my youth, like many writers of my generation, I was a Marxist and believed socialism would be the remedy for the exploitation and social injustices that were becoming more severe in my country, in Latin America, and in the rest of the Third World. My disillusion with statism and collectivism and my transition to the democrat and liberal that I am – that I try to be – was long and difficult and carried out slowly as a consequence of episodes like the conversion of the Cuban Revolution, about which I initially had been enthusiastic, to the authoritarian, vertical model of the Soviet Union; the testimony of dissidents who managed to slip past the barbed wire fences of the Gulag; the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the nations of the Warsaw Pact; and because of thinkers like Raymond Aron, Jean Francois Rével, Isaiah Berlin, and Karl Popper, to whom I owe my reevaluation of democratic culture and open societies. Those masters were an example of lucidity and gallant courage when the intelligentsia of the West, as a result of frivolity or opportunism, appeared to have succumbed to the spell of Soviet socialism or, even worse, to the bloody witches’ Sabbath of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

As a boy I dreamed of coming some day to Paris because, dazzled by French literature, I believed that living there and breathing the air breathed by Balzac, Stendhal, Baudelaire, and Proust would help transform me into a real writer, and if I did not leave Peru I would be only a pseudo Sundays-and-holidays writer. And the truth is I owe to France and French culture unforgettable lessons, for example that literature is as much a calling as it is a discipline, a job, an obstinacy. I lived there when Sartre and Camus were alive and writing, in the years of Ionesco, Beckett, Bataille, and Cioran, the discovery of the theater of Brecht and the films of Ingmar Bergman, the Theatre National Populaire of Jean Vilar and the Odéon of Jean-Louis Barrault, of the Nouvelle Vague and the Nouveau Roman and the speeches, beautiful literary pieces, of André Malraux, and what may have been the most theatrical spectacle in Europe during that time, the press conferences and Olympic thunderings of General de Gaulle. But perhaps I am most grateful to France for the discovery of Latin America. There I learned that Peru was part of a vast community united by history, geography, social and political problems, a certain mode of being, and the delicious language it spoke and wrote. And in those same years, it was producing a new, forceful literature. There I read Borges, Octavio Paz, Cortázar, García Márquez, Fuentes, Cabrera Infante, Rulfo, Onetti, Carpentier, Edwards, Donoso, and many others whose writings were revolutionizing narrative in the Spanish language, and thanks to whom Europe and a good part of the world discovered that Latin America was not the continent only of coups, operetta despots, bearded guerrillas, and the maracas of the mambo and the cha-cha-cha but of ideas, artistic forms, and literary fantasies that transcended the picturesque and spoke a universal language.

From that time to this, not without stumbling and blunders, Latin America has made progress although, as César Vallejo said in a poem, Hay, hermanos, muchísimo que hacer [There is still, brothers, so much to do]. We are afflicted with fewer dictatorships than before, only Cuba and her named successor, Venezuela, and some pseudo populist, clownish democracies like those in Bolivia and Nicaragua. But in the rest of the continent democracy is functioning, supported by a broad popular consensus, and for the first time in our history, as in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and almost all of Central America, we have a left and a right that respect legality, the freedom to criticize, elections, and succession in power. That is the right road, and if it stays on it, combats insidious corruption, and continues to integrate with the world, Latin America will finally stop being the continent of the future and become the continent of the present.

I never felt like a foreigner in Europe or, in fact, anywhere. In all the places I have lived, in Paris, London, Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin, Washington, New York, Brazil, or the Dominican Republic, I felt at home. I have always found a lair where I could live in peace, work, learn things, nurture dreams, and find friends, good books to read, and subjects to write about. It does not seem to me that my unintentionally becoming a citizen of the world has weakened what are called “my roots,” my connections to my own country – which would not be particularly important – because if that were so, my Peruvian experiences would not continue to nourish me as a writer and would not always appear in my stories, even when they seem to occur very far from Peru. I believe instead that living for so long outside the country where I was born has strengthened those connections, adding a more lucid perspective to them, and a nostalgia that can differentiate the adjectival from the substantive and keep memories reverberating. Love of the country where one was born cannot be obligatory, but like any other love must be a spontaneous act of the heart, like the one that unites lovers, parents and children, and friends.

I carry Peru deep inside me because that is where I was born, grew up, was formed, and lived those experiences of childhood and youth that shaped my personality and forged my calling, and there I loved, hated, enjoyed, suffered, and dreamed. What happens there affects me more, moves and exasperates me more than what occurs elsewhere. I have not wished it or imposed it on myself; it simply is so. Some compatriots accused me of being a traitor, and I was on the verge of losing my citizenship when, during the last dictatorship, I asked the democratic governments of the world to penalize the regime with diplomatic and economic sanctions, as I have always done with all dictatorships of any kind, whether of Pinochet, Fidel Castro, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Imams in Iran, apartheid in South Africa, the uniformed satraps of Burma (now called Myanmar). And I would do it again tomorrow if – may destiny not wish it and Peruvians not permit it – Peru were once again the victim of a coup that would annihilate our fragile democracy. It was not the precipitate, emotional action of a resentful man, as some scribblers wrote, accustomed to judging others from the point of view of their own pettiness. It was an act in line with my conviction that a dictatorship represents absolute evil for a country, a source of brutality and corruption and profound wounds that take a long time to close, poison the nation’s future, and create pernicious habits and practices that endure for generations and delay democratic reconstruction. This is why dictatorships must be fought without hesitation, with all the means at our disposal, including economic sanctions. It is regrettable that democratic governments, instead of setting an example by making common cause with those, like the Damas de Blanco in Cuba, the Venezuelan opposition, or Aung San Suu Kyi and Liu Xiaobo, who courageously confront the dictatorships they endure, often show themselves complaisant not with them but with their tormenters. Those valiant people, struggling for their freedom, are also struggling for ours.

A compatriot of mine, José María Arguedas, called Peru the country of “every blood.” I do not believe any formula defines it better: that is what we are and that is what all Peruvians carry inside us, whether we like it or not: an aggregate of traditions, races, beliefs, and cultures proceeding from the four cardinal points. I am proud to feel myself the heir to the pre-Hispanic cultures that created the textiles and feather mantles of Nazca and Paracas and the Mochican or Incan ceramics exhibited in the best museums in the world, the builders of Machu Picchu, Gran Chimú, Chan Chan, Kuelap, Sipán, the burial grounds of La Bruja and El Sol and La Luna, and to the Spaniards who, with their saddle bags, swords, and horses, brought to Peru Greece, Rome, the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Renaissance, Cervantes, Quevedo, and Góngora, and the harsh language of Castile sweetened by the Andes. And with Spain came Africa, with its strength, its music, and its effervescent imagination, to enrich Peruvian heterogeneity. If we investigate only a little we discover that Peru, like the Aleph of Borges, is a small format of the entire world. What an extraordinary privilege for a country not to have an identity because it has all of them!

The conquest of America was cruel and violent, like all conquests, of course, and we should criticize it but not forget as we do that those who committed pillage and crimes were, for the most part, our great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers, the Spaniards who came to America and adopted American ways, not those who remained in their own country. Such criticism, to be just, should be self-criticism. Because when we gained our independence from Spain two hundred years ago, those who assumed power in the former colonies, instead of liberating the Indians and creating justice for old wrongs, continued to exploit them with as much greed and ferocity as the conquerors and, in some countries, decimating and exterminating them. Let us say this with absolute clarity: for two centuries the emancipation of the indigenous population has been our exclusive responsibility, and we have not fulfilled it. This continues to be an unresolved issue in all of Latin America. There is not a single exception to this ignominy and shame.

I love Spain as much as Peru, and my debt to her is as great as my gratitude. If not for Spain, I never would have reached this podium or become a known writer and perhaps, like so many unfortunate colleagues, I would wander in the limbo of writers without luck, publishers, prizes, or readers, whose talent – sad comfort – posterity may one day discover. All my books were published in Spain, where I received exaggerated recognition, and friends like Carlos Barral, Carmen Balcells, and so many others were zealous about my stories having readers. And Spain granted me a second nationality when I could have lost mine. I have never felt the slightest incompatibility between being Peruvian and having a Spanish passport, because I have always felt that Spain and Peru are two sides of the same coin, not only in my small person but in essential realities like history, language, and culture.

Of all the years I have lived on Spanish soil, I remember as most brilliant the five I spent in a dearly loved Barcelona in the early 1970s. Franco’s dictatorship was still in power and shooting, but by then it was a fossil in rags, and especially in the field of culture, incapable of maintaining its earlier controls. Cracks and chinks were opening that the censors could not patch over, and through them Spanish society absorbed new ideas, books, currents of thought, and artistic values and forms prohibited until then as subversive. No city took as much or better advantage of this start of an opening than Barcelona or experienced a comparable excitement in all fields of ideas and creativity. It became the cultural capital of Spain, the place you had to be to breathe anticipation of the freedom to come. And, in a sense, it was also the cultural capital of Latin America because of the number of painters, writers, publishers, and artists from Latin American countries who either settled in or traveled back and forth to Barcelona: it was where you had to be if you wanted to be a poet, novelist, painter, or composer in our time. For me, those were unforgettable years of comradeship, friendship, plots, and fertile intellectual work. Just as Paris had been, Barcelona was a Tower of Babel, a cosmopolitan, universal city where it was stimulating to live and work and where, for the first time since the days of the Civil War, Spanish and Latin American writers mixed and fraternized, recognizing one another as possessors of the same tradition and allied in a common enterprise and certainty: the end of the dictatorship was imminent and in democratic Spain, culture would be the principal protagonist.

Although it did not occur exactly that way, the Spanish transition from dictatorship to democracy has been one of the best stories of modern times, an example of how, when good sense and reason prevail and political adversaries set aside sectarianism for the common good, events can occur as marvelous as the ones in novels of magic realism. The Spanish transition from authoritarianism to freedom, from underdevelopment to prosperity, from third-world economic contrasts and inequalities to a country of middle classes, her integration into Europe and her adoption in a few years of a democratic culture, has astonished the entire world and precipitated Spain’s modernization. It has been moving and instructive for me to experience this near at hand, at times from the inside. I fervently hope that nationalism, the incurable plague of the modern world and of Spain as well, does not ruin this happy tale.

I despise every form of nationalism, a provincial ideology – or rather, religion – that is short-sighted, exclusive, that cuts off the intellectual horizon and hides in its bosom ethnic and racist prejudices, for it transforms into a supreme value, a moral and ontological privilege, the fortuitous circumstance of one’s birthplace. Along with religion, nationalism has been the cause of the worst slaughters in history, like those in the two world wars and the current bloodletting in the Middle East. Nothing has contributed as much as nationalism to Latin America’s having been Balkanized and stained with blood in senseless battles and disputes, squandering astronomical resources to purchase weapons instead of building schools, libraries, and hospitals.

We should not confuse a blinkered nationalism and its rejection of the “other,” always the seed of violence, with patriotism, a salutary, generous feeling of love for the land where we were born, where our ancestors lived, where our first dreams were forged, a familiar landscape of geographies, loved ones, and events that are transformed into signposts of memory and defenses against solitude. Homeland is not flags, anthems, or apodictic speeches about emblematic heroes, but a handful of places and people that populate our memories and tinge them with melancholy, the warm sensation that no matter where we are, there is a home for us to return to.
Peru is for me Arequipa, where I was born but never lived, a city my mother, grandparents, and aunts and uncles taught me to know through their memories and yearnings, because my entire family tribe, as Arequepeños tend to do, always carried the White City with them in their wandering existence. It is Piura in the desert, mesquite trees and the long-suffering burros that Piurans of my youth called “somebody else’s feet” – an elegant, sad name – where I discovered that storks did not bring babies into the world but couples made them by doing outrageous things that were a mortal sin. It is San Miguel Academy and the Varieties Theater where for the first time I saw a short work I had written produced on stage. It is the corner of Diego Ferré and Colón, in Lima’s Miraflores – we called it the Happy Neighborhood – where I exchanged short pants for long trousers, smoked my first cigarette, learned to dance, fall in love, and open my heart to girls. It is the dusty, pulsing editorial offices of the paper La Crónica where, at sixteen, I stood vigil over my first arms as a journalist, a trade that, along with literature, has occupied almost my entire life and, like books, has made me live more, know the world better, and be with men and women from everywhere and every class, excellent, good, bad, and execrable people. It is the Leoncio Prado Military Academy, where I learned that Peru was not the small middle-class redoubt where I had lived until then, confined and protected, but a large, ancient, rancorous, unequal country, shaken by all kinds of social storms. It is the clandestine cells of Cahuide where, with a handful of San Marcos students, we prepared the world revolution. And Peru is my friends in the Freedom Movement with whom for three years, in the midst of bombs, blackouts, and terrorist assassinations, we worked in defense of democracy and the culture of freedom.

Stockholm, December 7, 2010

Translation by Edith Grossman

Cuban prisoners of conscience: A call to action on their behalf

"Action for one’s own self binds, action for the sake of others delivers from bondage." - Mohandas Gandhi

Eleven Cuban prisoners of conscience, who should have never been imprisoned in the first place and that the Cuban regime pledged to free a month ago remain imprisoned apparently because they have refused to go into exile and want to remain in their homeland.

When the original November 7, 2010 deadline passed [it had been announced following the Catholic Church's mediation between the Ladies in White and the Cuban regime for the release of the remaining prisoners of conscience unjustly imprisoned during the March 2003 Black Cuban Spring ] the opposition vowed to intensify its protests and on the same day Diosdado González Marrero announced he would begin a hunger strike.

On November 10, 2010 Yoani Sanchez spoke with Alejandrina García de la Riva , the wife of Cuban prisoner of conscience Diosdado González Marrero and announced to the world that he had postponed his hunger strike after "Diosdado Gonzalez was visited by an official from security that promised they would be freed 'between 15 days and one month."

One month has passed and only two prisoners have been freed 68 year old Arnaldo Ramos Lauzerique who was able to return home and Luis Enrique Ferrer Garcia, who agreed to go into exile "if the title to his house could be transferred to family members and if he was allowed to return to the island to visit a brother still in jail." The agreement reached back in July was not conditioned on prisoners agreeing to go into exile.

Eleven Cuban prisoners of conscience from the 2003 Black Cuban Spring remain imprisoned today that were supposed to be released on November 7, 2010. There names and faces are listed below:

Pedro Argüelles Morán

Oscar Biscet González

Eduardo Díaz Fleitas

José Daniel Ferrer García

Diosdado González Marrero

Iván Hernández Carrillo

Librado Linares García

Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez

Angel Moya Acosta

Félix Navarro Rodríguez

Guido Sigler Amaya

Today is December 7, 2010 the 114th anniversary of the death of Cuban Independence hero Antonio Maceo and a symbol of courage in resistance in Cuban history. These men in refusing exile and continuing to suffer in prison conditions that are inhumane and amount to torture are writing a new chapter of resistance to tyranny but unlike Maceo who took up arms against the enemy they are doing so nonviolently.

This is a profound break with Cuba's violent political history. It has been a decision taken by Cuba's national civic movement since the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976.

In three days the world will observe International Human Rights Day which marks the 62nd Anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. Cuban diplomats representing a democratic Cuba wrote one of the early drafts of this human rights charter.

December 10, 2010 will also coincide with the one month deadline for the release of the 11 prisoners of conscience listed above as a representative of the dictatorship pledged to Diosdado González Marrero on November 10.

Now the dictatorship has engaged in a three pronged attack to divert attention from the plight of these human rights defenders. First the regime has engaged in a campaign to attack the international press for paying attention to their plight. Secondly, the Cuban government has sought to distract attention with commuting death sentences of two El Salvadoreans accused of terror bombings in 1997. Finally, the announcement of the first Communist Party congress in the past 14 years for April of 2011 along with a discussion of economic reforms along the China model has shifted attention away from human rights and democratic reforms in the international press. The Castro brothers are masters of distraction.

It is up to people of good will with access to the internet to remind the world that there are Cuban prisoners of conscience unjustly imprisoned that were supposed to have been freed on November 7, 2010. This is a time for quick and concrete action that requires a minimum of effort but will make an impact. Here are three suggestions:

1) Operation Cubans have a Right to their Rights focusing on Article XIX of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states:

Article 19.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

The human rights defenders imprisoned since 2003 were imprisoned for seeking, receiving and imparting information and ideas to other Cubans and the international community. Name each one of the 11 imprisoned activists. All have been recognized by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience. They can be listed together or separately. Post their names on facebook, twitter, in blogs and any other social media that is appropriate.

2) Organize flash mobs beginning on December 10 to generate awareness outside of cyberspace and in the real world. By definition its quick and can be organized quickly through social media tools. Go out and gather signatures petitioning the Cuban regime for their release. Norwegian students in November 2010 gathered over 400 signatures calling for the release of Cuban prisoner of conscience Librado Linares and made the newspapers raising awareness.

3) Record and post video messages of solidarity on youtube directed at these prisoners of conscience and their families by name demanding their freedom along with what human rights mean to you. Make a poster with a photo of the prisoner and their name. For example the image at the top of the page with the phrase: "I Stand with Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet." Take your picture holding up the poster or a message of solidarity and e-mail it to us at freecubanow@hotmail.com

These are just three concrete ideas for action. They've been tried in other places where prisoners of conscience have been imprisoned and have worked.

No doubt there are many more that people of good will can brainstorm and generate in short order. Be bold. Be creative. Be inspired by the nonviolent example set by these human rights defenders and others practicing civic resistance around the world and take constructive action.