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TIMELESS TOPICS OF WRITERS MEETINGS
The 32nd International meeting of PEN
Addres by the President of the Republic of Slovenia Milan Kucan
Bled, 20 May 1999
"At your meeting this year you are speaking about the Balkans, about war in the former Yugoslavia, and about Kosovo, the most unfortunate region on the European continent. I would go so far as to assume that all of you genuinely and enthusiastically advocate the role of a writer as an instrument for asserting the culture of peace, as has been stated. It is not my place to discuss this or that role of writers, but from my own experience I do know something: words do hurt, words even kill, words heal, and words open the doors to reach other people. However, words can also slam shut the doors between peoples..."
Ladies and gentlemen,
So far I have had the opportunity several times to share your friendly meetings and deliberations with you here at Bled. In your selection of discussion topics, you have again convinced me that you and your PEN stand squarely in the middle of life and the time, which defines that life. Unfortunately, this time has also been witness to violations of freedom and human dignity, where people resort to actions which lead to dehumanisation of our world and to situations where authority abuses its subjects. I see PEN as a protest against such a world.
The century we live in began with violence, wars and human suffering; indeed, at its close it is faced with yet another war and with unprecedented encroachments on human dignity, which you writers could not and cannot accept without responding to it and raising your voice against it.
At your meeting this year you are speaking about the Balkans, about war in the former Yugoslavia, and about Kosovo, the most unfortunate region on the European continent. I would go so far as to assume that all of you genuinely and enthusiastically advocate the role of a writer as an instrument for asserting the culture of peace, as has been stated. It is not my place to discuss this or that role of writers, but from my own experience I do know something: words do hurt, words even kill, words heal, and words open the doors to reach other people. However, words can also slam shut the doors between peoples.
I recall a Serbian novel. Victorious Albanians marching along a deep gorge, while high above them stands a young Serbian warrior using a sling to fire poisonous snakes at the Albanians. And he will do this for as long as God gives him strength. This is the moral of the story, which, perhaps somewhat vaguely, sprang to my mind while I was thinking about your discussions during this year’s meeting in Bled. I am trying to make some sense of these terrible, yet artistically expressed, words. Are they, perhaps, trying to express a regret that this is a war without end, or are they appealing for the war never to end? Who knows. Perhaps your sensitivity to the truth concealed in artistic words will more easily perceive what the real message of this story is.
My own feeling for life and the political relations in it tells me that peace will some day prevail in this part of Europe. And this will perhaps happen very soon. I believe in this because I believe that never before in Balkan conflicts has it become so clear that this war is an evil which is destroying both the Serbian and the Albanian peoples. I believe in this because I know that both peoples are in possession of enough supporters of democracy. I believe in this because it has become clear that people, with their dignity and with all their differences, are the foundation, essence and meaning of democracy, that therefore people are above the state and any other man-made institution. Man and his life, his freedoms and rights are increasingly recognised as the greatest values on our planet. The human person is becoming primary and universal, while the state is becoming secondary - and even a leviathan, if it fails to see man as its first and foremost value, if it only serves in subjecting people to authority, and in imposing a relationship of obedience.
It is true that legal and moral dilemmas are clearly pervading this issue, and answers are unclear. In the name of what and whom does anyone have the right to punish a sovereign country employing violence to trample on generally accepted values? What is the minimum of human rights which is above the sovereignty of a nation-state and which therefore justifies intervention by the international community if these rights are violated? Is this merely a right of the international community or is at the same time its obligation to intervene? Is it possible to accept that citizens of a certain country are punished just because they elected and tolerate authority which itself is intolerant and genocidal to a people in which different blood runs and which speaks a different language? Indeed, should they have the same fate as all those people who have been prosecuted and tortured by, and expelled from their own country simply because they are not able or lack the power to remove a dictator and his regime?
As a politician, I see no other solution but to use force to stop the rage of violence against people, state terror, the humiliation of women, and the horror that will accompany children all their lives. But I also wonder, at the onset of the third millennium, how might we cut out the roots of violence and embark on the road of peace which will protect people and their dignity, which will pave the way for co-operation, creativity, tolerance and coexistence of people, and for a dialogue between civilisations, cultures, religions and peoples. Only this kind of a globalised world will be a world of peace. This will also be a world charged with global responsibility for peace. But who will be the guardian of this peace?
You who think and write about the culture of peace can assist in the search for credible answers to these questions. In doing so, you will also help the generations to come, because books are not limited by time and they will be read by many generations. Let the message of your books be peace and respect for human beings, since a human being deprived of peace loses his humanity, dignity and self-respect.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention. One thing I would like you to remember is that I wish you all well in your writing about people and their rights, indeed that people hold these rights and that they might live in dignity and freedom.
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