I take it as an honour to have been chosen to be the keynote speaker at this, the fifth annual International Press Freedom Awards dinner.
Tonight's dinner honours four journalists who have worked in the most difficult of circumstances. One of them, Lira Bayseitova, who is here with us tonight, has paid a terrible, indeed unimaginable, price for her dedication to the truth. Her fellow honorees, Ahmed Abdisalam Adan, Mohamed Elmi and Ali Shamarke, have returned to their war-torn and splintered homeland and, against many odds, continue to struggle to make their own contribution to building a nascent democracy by enabling Somali citizens to hear a diversity of views from a credible source.
They are, of course, not alone. By all accounts, this has been a deadly year for the profession of journalism. By the end of last month, the International Freedom of Expression Index had documented the deaths in 2002 of 40 members of the media who worked in television, radio and print. This is up significantly from the 31 journalists killed in all of 2001. Arrests of journalists were up 50 percent, documented instances of threats and physical attacks were up 40 percent, and incidents of evident censorship were up 28 percent. Napoleon once observed that "four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than one thousand bayonets," and it is clear that despots and dictators around the world continue to agree with him.
Too many governments around the world today do not accept the fact that their responsibility is to give priority to creating conditions where freedom from fear prevails for all. Instead they choose to live by fear; a fear for themselves and the fear they can generate in others. They fail to recognize, as Louise Arbour put it when she addressed this audience three years ago, that the suppression of freedom of expression feeds "the extremist discourse that leads not only to war, but to genocide, extermination, murder, rape, torture, enslavement, deportation and prosecution on ethnic, racial or religious grounds." They also don't realize, or choose to ignore, that the repressive actions they authorize today are likely to come back to haunt them and their societies in the future.
Tip O'Neill, the famous American politician, observed some time ago that "all politics is local." Author and journalist Thomas Friedman, recently wrote, "All politics is global." Both observations are right in their time; what is certainly true today is that factors that are global in nature have an unprecedented impact on domestic politics. We know that domestic solutions to problems here in Canada are only effective when conceived in their global context. For journalists the consequence is clear. As put by the founder of The Star, "World news is Canadian news." This is as true for human rights as it is true for the environment or economic development. That is why Canadians are dedicated to promoting democracy abroad as well as in Canada. As Reinhold Niebuhr put it eloquently, "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." In an era of global interdependence this means that we must focus on the development of democratic institutions beyond our borders if we are to preserve the pluralistic, multilateral society that we have established here in Canada.
When we look at means to ensure that our values of tolerance, respect for others and human rights are projected internationally, we first must consider strengthening those multilateral institutions that we have built together since the Second World War.
One such institution is, of course, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, where Canada has underlined, time and time again, its belief that the right to freedom of opinion and expression is one of the pillars of democracy, and that it underlies and strengthens all other human rights. Without its full enjoyment it is possible for states to keep their citizens ignorant of the extent of other violations of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights, and to undermine any efforts at collective action to address such violations. Free speech and media are of critical importance in the promotion and protection of the entire range of human rights necessary for durable, sustainable, social and political peace. Of course, access to freely developed information is also essential for the creation of all government policies that affect the daily lives of our citizens. One has only to think of the vast scenes of environmental degradation that exist in all too many places in the world to recognize the consequences that today's citizens are paying for policies that were conceived without their knowledge by inaccessible and unaccountable leaders. For these, among other reasons, Canada has chosen to be the principal sponsor of the Commission's annual resolution on The Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression.
Nearly 10 years ago, in 1993, Canada played an instrumental role in establishing the mandate of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, a mandate that has been renewed every three years, most recently in 2002. In negotiating the text of this year's resolution Canada was able to secure the adoption of more expansive language on the protection of journalists in many vulnerable situations.
As this audience knows better than most, much remains to be done. This evening I would like to draw your attention to two areas to which I believe we must devote special attention. The first is what Reporters Without Borders characterized in its most recent annual report as "the eternal and harrowing problem of the impunity enjoyed nearly all over the world by those who kill or attack journalists." The Freedom of Expression Rapporteurs of the UN, the OAS [Organization of American States], and the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] have all identified impunity as a major concern. They have noted that it is the duty of the state to prevent and investigate these occurrences, to punish the perpetrators and to ensure that the victims receive compensation. I am therefore pleased to be able to announce this evening that the Government of Canada will, through PEN Canada, provide financial support to International PEN and its Writers in Prison Committee for a freedom of expression and impunity campaign focused primarily, but not exclusively, on impunity for crimes committed against writers, journalists, academics and human rights defenders in the Americas. The campaign will be launched next week at the Fourth Biennial International PEN Writers in Prison Committee Conference in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and will end a year later at the 68th International PEN World Congress in Mexico City.
The second issue I would like to draw attention to is the need to nurture respect for the right to freedom of expression in newly emerging democracies. When I was Vice-President of the Parliamentary Association of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, we spearheaded efforts to assist the newly emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe to understand the need, indeed the requirement, for these societies to fully respect the right to freedom of expression if they wish to be integrated politically and economically with the West.
To encourage freedom of expression, the OSCE established a Prize for Journalism and Democracy to which, I am pleased to say, Southam Inc. contributes annually. Sometimes the award is accompanied by a poignant and personal realization of the price that journalists pay for servicing their communities and their profession. This was certainly the case in 2001 when we stood in silence and respect to acknowledge the presence of two courageous widows, Senora Lopez de Lacalle and Mrs. Georgiy Gongadaze, who were there to collect the prize in the name of their husbands. Senor Lacalle was murdered by the ETA [Basque Homeland and Liberty] in northern Spain, and Mr. Gongadaze disappeared in Ukraine in 2000 in circumstances that pointed to the involvement of the political authorities. As stated at the time of the award, we sought "to send a signal against the unfortunate growing international trend of censorship by threats and killing."
Fortunately, there are encouraging signs that a recognition of the need for open societies is gaining great acceptance. I was very pleased to note that, in agreeing on the New Partnership for Africa's Development, African leaders stated that "development is impossible in the absence of true democracy, respect for human rights, peace and good governance." We must all, governments, non-governmental organizations and the media alike, join forces to encourage new democracies to respect the right to freedom of expression and the other fundamental freedoms, as only in so doing can real security, both at the national and individual levels, be achieved.
Today's journalists face extraordinary challenges. Our citizens want information and guidance that will enable them to make informed choices about how to react to global issues that nonetheless impact their daily lives. They need to know about the asymmetric threats posed by terrorism on a global scale; what measures we need to take to repress such threats nationally and internationally and what measures risk threatening our own liberties; and how we need to engage moderate voices of Islam and others if we are to win the campaign for their hearts and minds and prevail over the voices of despair and of extremism.
And, as we contemplate what action to take in respect of the danger posed by Iraq today or indeed other similar situations in the future, we need journalists who can help us "unpack the rhetoric," help us judge whether we must take the firmest of action against a dangerous foe, with the risks of the consequences of which we were poignantly reminded on November 11, or whether there is a place for dialogue and political accommodation, which is the only way that ultimate peace may be assured, either before or after conflict.
In this we need the collaboration, not only of our journalists, but also of our editors, publishers and media owners, who bear a particularly heavy responsibility in this day of media concentration, to ensure that a diversity of voices are available to our public. Can we lecture the rest of the world about the need for a free media when our own journalists speak of the chill prevailing in some of our own newsrooms?
In all this there must necessarily be a certain tension between the role of the journalist and the politician. I have certainly been more aware of that tension since my appointment as Foreign Affairs Minister last January, whether by the vigour of the scrum or the way in which my wise and well chosen words are portrayed in articles that seem to take them in unintended directions, or at the hand of the political cartoonist who manages to turn my nose and jaw into a ski jump or make me look like Richard Nixon's long lost brother.
But ours, I suggest, is also a symbiotic relationship, one of mutual dependence and, most often, respect. The world we want is much like the Canada we want: a sustainable future of shared security and prosperity; of tolerance and respect for diversity; of democracy and the realization of human rights; of opportunity and equal justice for all.
Ultimately we are called upon to work together so that political decisions will be made in the light of reason based upon hard information. In so acting, I believe that all of us must also work together to ensure that the respect for the right to freedom of expression becomes truly global, so that journalists everywhere can work and live without fear for themselves or their families. I join you in saluting the work of our honorees this evening and of their many colleagues around the globe. They deserve our support. May 2003 be a better year for freedom of expression than this year has been and may we all work together, in our separate but interdependent spheres, to improve the conditions in that world upon which all our futures depend.
Thank you.