Prague Spring 1968
Gelegenheid:Thank you very much for organizing this momentous event and I’m so glad to be here today. So many people I know are here. Some of the people I admire most are here, among them the man who has taught me everything I know professionally – Minister of State, Max van der Stoel. It really is an honour for me to be in the same room as him. Because he has done so much for my country, he has done so much for human rights, and he has done so much for Europe. And I am sure that you will discuss with him his own role in the years that are being commemorated here today. It fills me with great pleasure that he is here, but not only Max van der Stoel. Boris Dittrich is here. He has a Czech connection. He was my colleague in parliament for eight years. A good friend, a true liberal, and somebody with an inspiring personality, always friendly and open. He made a true contribution, with his Czech origins, to Dutch society. Boris, thank you for everything you have done for the Netherlands.
I understand that there is also somebody here who I don’t know personally, but who funnily enough comes into my bedroom often via the radio: Martin Šimek. He is probably the most talented and most personal interviewer we have in the Netherlands. His interviews with Dutch personalities are something you remember for a long time. I remember driving home from The Hague in the middle of the night once and listening to his interview with Willeke Alberti, whom the Dutch here will know is a very popular singer and the daughter of an even more popular singer, and this was one of the most beautiful interviews by Šimek that I had ever heard. He opened up her personality in a way I will always remember. I never knew her, and yet since then, I have always loved her and seen her as such a humane, big-hearted person, thanks to you.
Just two examples – or three perhaps, because there’s another example I shouldn’t forget. A couple of months ago I had the honour to be present in Bratislava when Jiří Kylián, accompanied by his mother, attended a performance by the Nederlands Dans Theater of his pieces and he got a standing ovation that lasted at least ten minutes. He too has made an incredible contribution to Dutch, international and European culture. On that occasion, Jiří told me his life story, of how he had fled, via Munich, in 1968, and of the horrible things that he heard had happened in Prague. And then I thought back to my own youth – I was seven years old in 1968 – and I was thinking: what happened during that year? What do I still remember? Four things perhaps. The Vietnam War was there all the time. We had just got a television set at home; I remember the images. I remember the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the assassination of Martin Luther King. And then I had this vague memory of this country in the heart of Europe that was fighting for its freedom and then got crushed by the Soviets. And at the same time I also remember the discussions we had at home and with friends, saying that this was a tragedy, but it was inevitable. What could one do? It was the Cold War. The Brezhnev doctrine. Take care of your own. It was unacceptable, but it happened, and somehow we accepted it.
A couple of years ago I attended a seminar, here in Prague, and I heard Vaclav Havel give a wonderful speech. I still quote from it often. In this wonderful speech, he said: East and West should become geographical notions again, and this got me thinking. And indeed in 1968, when we had discussed the events in Prague, and our reactions to it, East and West had not been geographical notions. The West was modernity, freedom, openness. The East: backwardness, dictatorship, suppression. Even though the Berlin Wall came down nineteen years ago, we still have not completely got rid of these connotations of East and West, and I see it as my task, in honour of all of you who suffered during those years, and those of you who fled and found a future in the Netherlands, to make sure that, at least to our generation, and that of our children, East and West will be geographical denominations.
The Czech Republic, this has gone very fast, and we bear responsibility for the larger Europe but also, as the Ambassador said, we are facing new challenges, also within our societies. In Dutch society, migration today is seen as a threat. In Dutch society, integration is seen as something that is problematic. In Dutch society we have forgotten to look at the successes of those people, for instance, who came from Czechoslovakia in 1968. Who did contribute to our nation and to better our situation for us. We are tending to lose this fundamental human capacity, which is to look at the world through somebody else’s eyes. That is what, according to Albert Camus, distinguishes us from animals. The capacity to look at the world through somebody else's eyes, to be prepared to have a dialogue, to be willing to be convinced by someone else’s argument, somebody else’s point of view. And I think this is the essence of what makes us Europeans, whether Dutch or Czech. The essence is that we see our diversity as enriching society, that we have this ability to listen to somebody who is different, to listen to somebody’s point of view and to at least be prepared to be convinced if somebody has convincing arguments. Perhaps this is the basis of our debates tonight.
Let me end by saying that I combine a slight feeling of shame for the reaction of the West in 1968 – it is not a personal shame, but shame felt for how our nations reacted at the time – I combine this with a feeling of enormous gratitude to all those people who fled Czechoslovakia and came to the Netherlands, made a great life for themselves, and more importantly, contributed tremendously to the success of Dutch society. I thank you from the bottom of my heart, those of you who did this, I wish you fruitful discussions and most of all, I wish all of us a bright common European future. Thank you very much.