Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-11-Speech-3-141"
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"en.20050511.16.3-141"2
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"The great Hungarian poet born a century ago, Attila József, reminds us that we, the European nations, who have fought many wars between ourselves, have a lot of common matters to put in order.
In his letter to Vytautas Landsbergis and me, Mr Frattini has written recently that your history is our history too. When we celebrate the end of the World War in Europe, we must not forget that the end of the war brought something different for each of the European nations. In the case of more fortunate nations, it marked the end of long suffering and immeasurable destruction sixty years ago. We bow our head before all who made a sacrifice for peace. Another evil dictatorship, however, awaited the other half of Europe with no less suffering and destruction. Night after night without daylight, occupation after occupation without independence, inhumane dictatorship after inhumane dictatorship without freedom.
Slovakian representative, Zita Pleštinská, sits here behind me among us, whose Hungarian father, István Kányai, was equally hunted by Nazis and Fascists, and then later suffered nine years in the hells of Soviet concentration camps. The one, who frees the innocent captive from one prison and locks him up in another, is a prison guard, not a liberator. And the prisoner will not see him as someone who granted his freedom, but one who took it. For many European nations, their much-coveted freedom came fifty years after May 8, 1945. And the last step was taken May 1, 2004, marking the ending of the Yalta world order. In reality, the Second World War ended on May 1, 2004. Therefore, the end of the war should more appropriately be celebrated here, in the capital of reunified Europe instead of Moscow.
The nations of Europe looked at two sides of the same wall: the barbed wire divided us in two for half a century. We bore the unbearable, endured the system established by the Soviet Red Army, who stayed after the liberation, genocide, class and ethnic-based cleansing, the killing, torturing, deportation and disenfranchisement of innocent people committed in the name of the progressive socialist idea. The system forced upon Central European nations by Soviet Communism was a direct consequence of the plan that Stalin spoke about on August 19, 1939 before the Politbüro, when giving an explanation for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. I quote:
Our nations rose up against such dictatorship from the Bolshevik Parties many times: 1956 in Berlin, October 1956 in Hungary and Poznañ, 1968 in Czechoslovakia and 1980 in Poland. The West welcomed our revolutions, sympathised with us, then tolerated it when the Soviet Union quashed and bloodily stamped out these expressions of desire for freedom. Dear colleagues, our history is your history too. Nevertheless, we, the nations freed from Soviet occupation a decade ago, find no compassion when it comes to our recent history. After the war, Western Europe proudly straightened itself up and started to prosper in peace. Although it was not our fault, we got left out of this process. This gives ground to the current situation, in which there are people on the luckier side of Europe and even here in Parliament, who want to generate capital for themselves by frightening their own population with the cheap citizens of the new Member States, with people, whose country fell into an economic crisis because of the ineffectual socialist economy forced on them.
But many people in Western Europe do not understand either why the five-pointed red star, like the swastika, has become the symbol for hatred and oppression. Our history is your history too. Sixty years ago, Nazi powers were jointly defeated by nations of Europe. The discredited political class disappeared. There are no squares named after Hitler, and no statues erected to commemorate Nazi killers. Half a century later, the Soviet Union and the Communist regime also collapsed. Similarly, Yugoslavian Communism that went on its separate way without Soviet occupation suffered a disgraceful defeat. The successors of the fallen Communist system are eloquent business people demanding respect, responsible politicians, so to say. In Russia, statues of Stalin have been erected again, and the Soviet occupation, once again, is referred to as liberation. It seems that they wanted to hear less and less about the atrocities of the Communist dictatorship.
Dear Parliament, we must not think with a double standard. Auschwitz, the Katyn forest massacre, the Nazi and the two-time Soviet occupation of the Baltic States, unjust dictatorships dismembering Europe’s spheres of interest, borders drawn by force and pacts, deportation of whole nations, murdering, torturing, crippling of people, disenfranchising population exchanges, walls dividing nations, trampling on human and minority rights, these are all gross injustices, regardless of who committed them.
Sixty years after the military end of the war, it is time to face these issues. The enormous sacrifice of the Soviet army demands respect and honour. The occupying army, however, does not deserve our respect; it forced its own oppressing dictatorship on one part of the European nations. As long as we are unable to call an atrocity an atrocity, adjudge murder as murder, as long as we measure one sin with another, war will continue to rage in our head and wounds will not heal. Jesus says that the truth makes us free. The reuniting of Europe gives opportunity for a new beginning. Once winners and losers, oppressors and oppressed, we can build a joint, democratic Europe together based on the virtue of human dignity rooted in the Christian tradition, with hope for a brighter future and happier generations to come. Let us listen to Attila József, let us listen to the poet, and create order in our common matters!"@en1
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"‘The experience of the last 20 years has shown, that in peacetime it is impossible to maintain a Communist movement throughout Europe that would be strong enough for a Bolshevik Party to seize power. The dictatorship of such a Party will only become possible as the result of a major war.’"1
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