Remarks at the Civil Society Meet and Greet
Remarks
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Tolerance Center
Vilnius, Lithuania
December 6, 2011
SECRETARY CLINTON:
Well, good afternoon, and let me begin by thanking Yuri and all of you
for being here today. I also wish to thank the Tolerance Center for
hosting us. There could hardly be a better setting for this meeting. And
I think the work that civil society is now doing – the Parallel
Conference, the recommendations, the Civic Solidarity commitment, the
Internet Fundamental Freedoms Initiative – all of that added together is
going to help fill that gap, which I agree does exist.
And if one
looks back over the last 50 years, the Helsinki commitments were among
the most important human rights statements and drivers of action that we
found anywhere in the world. And I wish that they were no longer
needed. I wish that we could bid them farewell because they had done
their job. But the fact is – and you know this better than anyone – we
see them even more necessary today because of some of the trends that
are developing.
Across the OSCE region, what you do and the
organizations that you are part of and lead are helping to define the
front lines of the struggle on behalf of human rights and democracy for
the 21st century. I should begin by saying I know your work
is incredibly difficult. I know that the times in which you are working
are increasing challenging and even dangerous. I know that funding is
scarcer than it should be and that there are governments trying at every
turn to undermine what you do and what you stand for.
But please
know that the United States supports your efforts, because we think that
the work of civil society is more important than ever. If we needed
reminding on the events of this last year, particularly in Belarus but
also in North Africa and the Middle East and elsewhere, demonstrates
unequivocally that peace and stability depend just as much on meeting
people’s aspirations for dignity, freedom, and opportunity as they do on
military security.
And the change that we’re now seeing has such
great potential to move the world ever closer to full equality and human
rights for everyone. Technology is making it easier to come together to
take common actions. Individual activists have transformed societies
from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya. But we don’t yet really know the outcome
of so much of what is going on today. Will it advance the cause of
human freedom and dignity, or will it not? And certainly, I’ve raised a
number of issues at this morning’s ministerial that are deeply
concerning to us: violations of the freedom of expression, association,
assembly, religion; perversion of justice; attacks on human rights
defenders and journalists.
And as we meet in this Center of
Tolerance, there are just too many people, even in the OSCE region, who
are being denied their rights and living in an atmosphere in which
intolerance seems to be on the rise. Minorities, religious minorities,
Jews, Roma, LGBT communities – all of them and other vulnerable people
are facing prejudice and even violence.
And I wanted to commend
what civil society is doing here in Lithuania. Eight leading civil
society organizations have formed a national coalition to promote
tolerance. I think that’s very timely. And it’s not only beginning
already to have an impact, but it demonstrates the kind of collaboration
we need more of.
Governments need feedback – certainly
governments within societies but, of course, governments outside that
can be your allies in trying to promote change. We used to measure
government accountability by the metrics of multiyear election cycles,
annual assessments by international organizations. But today, with
Tweets and text messages, blog posts, interactive maps, civil society is
making judgments in real time. And I welcome this new Civic Solidarity
Platform because I think it will upgrade the ability that we need for
human rights monitoring throughout the region.
Now, unfortunately,
a number of governments continue to view civil society as adversaries
instead of partners. We’ve just witnessed a flawed Duma election in
Russia, including efforts to halt the election monitoring by Golos, a
respected independent civil society organization. And Golos’s work is
exactly the type of activities that countries committed to the rule of
law should welcome and countries that are members of the OSCE signed up
to support. It is strictly nonpartisan; its only goal is to promote
elections that are transparent and fair. But in the last few days, its
members have been hauled into court, its website has been subjected to
massive cyber attacks, and its motives have been maligned.
So for
us, it is just an article of faith that democracy is not only about
elections; but in the absence of free, fair, transparent elections, it’s
hard for democracy to be sustained.
And I wanted to speak clear
that regardless of where you live, citizenship requires holding your
government accountable. And those of us in government may not always
like the hard questions. We may not appreciate the criticism. It does
seem sometimes to those of us on the other side in government that we’ll
never satisfy civil society. But that’s the kind of necessary and
healthy tension that should exist in a democracy in order to sustain
trust and progress, to uphold the rules that govern democratic
societies, first and foremost, the rule of law. And in fact, allowing
groups like Golos to do their work is a really critical part of
sustaining trust and faith in government and enabling leaders to be able
to govern.
So the other initiative that Yuri talked about, which
is the cyber space initiative, is especially important because cyber
space, after all, is the public square of the 21st century. I
said earlier that today’s activists hold the Helsinki Accords in one
hand and a smart phone in the other. And that has unnerved a lot of
governments, so governments are now working overtime to try to suppress
access to the internet, free assembly and association, and speech within
cyber space. And that’s one of the reasons why the United States and
about two dozen other delegations have pressed for the adoption of a
declaration on fundamental freedoms in the digital age, because we
believe human rights need to be respected both online and off.
So I
know you’ve been working hard for several days now, and I really, first
and foremost, want to thank you for caring enough and being committed
enough to come to Vilnius to be part of this civil society effort, and
to encourage you to continue because we need you now more than ever.
And
I want to say a special word about Belarus. I was just privileged to
meet with a number of activists, human rights defenders, lawyers,
journalists, NGO leaders from Belarus, who are working so hard to
restore a sense of human rights, freedom, and dignity to the Belarusian
people. I travel around the world talking about human rights. Mike
Posner conducts human rights dialogues in many places where there’s a
long way to go before human rights are even acknowledged. We understand
that and we know we have to travel this long journey together. Mike was
with me in Burma just a few days ago, where we see slight flickers of
progress and where we want to support them.
But it is absolutely
inconceivable that in Europe today, in December of 2011, the Lukashenko
regime is behaving as it is behaving. And therefore, we all have a stake
in speaking out even more forcefully, raising even greater public
concern in Europe, the United States, and beyond, to make it
unequivocally clear to the Lukashenko government that their behavior is
unacceptable and they have to begin to reflect and respect the
aspirations of the people of Belarus.
So I will look forward to
working with you. I thank you for giving me this homework, Yuri. I will
take it and work through it with you, along with my colleagues. And I
will take very seriously your point about making sure that the gap
between stated commitments and actual actions in the OSCE is narrowed
and not widened in the year ahead.
Thank you all very much. (Applause.)
