Genocide: - DIIS

Uffe Østergård
2000 was a moving and thought provoking experience which defi nitively
allowed Göran Persson to take his place as an international statesman with
a deeply felt mission to prevent injustices against weaker groups. This is
what in a positive sense should be understood by the rather vague term
“European values”, referred to in the preambles of the various treaties
of European cooperation from 1957 onwards. Such terms can readily be
regarded as hypocritical, grand words only aired on offi cial occasions, or
when we criticize other countries whose policies we dislike. At the same
time, however, they are concepts which it nonetheless is crucially important
to hold on to if we are to keep alive the idea of a just and tolerable
society, nationally as well as internationally.
This was the background to the follow-up meeting held on January 29 and
30, 2001, under the title “The Stockholm International Forum Combating
Intolerance.” It was a somewhat smaller affair with about 400 participants
and correspondingly fewer security measures. The previous year large areas
of Stockholm had been cordoned off for several days while helicopters
fl ew low over the housetops with most of the trees and bushes concealing
armed police offi cers in combat uniforms. In 2001 no heads of state participated,
resulting in correspondingly fewer police in the streets. The most
distinguished guest in fact was the General Secretary of the United Nations,
Kofi Annan. Annan made a passionate speech appealing to Europe’s
conscience in which he upbraided the West European countries for their
shutting out of the rest of the world. Western Europe will have to open up
its frontiers if it wants to have any hope of retaining its high standards of
living, was his warning.
Thus “the world’s highest ranking public servant” as Annan was called in
the introduction does not think that Europeans at the moment live up to
the standards outlined in declarations on human rights and international
conventions on refugees and asylum seekers. These regulations were introduced
after the defeat of Nazi Germany and in many ways represent a
collective attempt to learn from history. “Never again” was the expression
of the allied troops and observers when they were faced with the piles of
bodies in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen in 1945. The impression made by
these scenes of horror today have faded to such an extent that we can see
a tendency to simply regard these conventions as unreasonable inhibitions
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