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Address by H. E. Vaira Vike-Freiberga, President of Latvia, |
Your Majesty,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is on a sombre note that I address you on this European Day of Remembrance of Victims of Terrorism. Who can forget the sorrow and outrage we all felt a year ago, when senseless terrorist violence extinguished the lives of nearly 200 Spanish men, women and children, and injured almost 2000 more here in Madrid. It was one of the worst terror-related human catastrophes that Europe had ever experienced. I avail myself of this occasion to express, once again, Latvias solidarity and deepest sympathies to the people of Spain on this painful anniversary date. We are grateful to His Majesty the King, for this high patronage of this important event that honours the memory of those who perished, and to the Club of Madrid, the government of Spain and to the City of Madrid for their support in its organization.
The horror and inhumanity of last years tragedy here in Madrid was still fresh in our minds when nearly 340 people, most of them children, were slain in Beslan in September of last year. In Iraq, merciless terrorist attacks have become daily events, yet their frequency in no way diminishes the utter senselessness of these random acts of destruction. Terrorism is an aimless - expression of rage and violence, randomly targeting innocent bystanders who do not and cannot have any role or responsibility in either fostering or hindering the goals that the terrorists claim to fight for.
This appalling trend of deliberately targeting, killing and maiming civilians has become a global menace that threatens the peace and security of all of our countries. While claiming to be a means of drawing attention to political demands, it cannot be, by definition, part of any political process. Terrorist demands cannot be acceded to and terrorism must not be permitted to become a tool for solving conflicts.
Your Majesty,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Terrorist activity differs from individual crime by not bringing any tangible benefits to its perpetrators. It is similar to organized crime, however, in being systematically exploited, organized, financed and directed by identifiable groups or individuals. Terrorist cells are recruited either among professional mercenaries or among ideological extremists or both. Extremist ideologies foster the growth of terrorism, and it makes no difference whether they are home grown in Europe, such as neonazism and neobolshevism, or imported from abroad, such as Islamic extremism. Terrorism also thrives in areas of festering conflict, from where it fans out to other parts of the world. That is why achieving a genuine and lasting peace in the Middle East, in Chechnya, in parts of Southeast Asia and elsewhere, will certainly become an important step forward in the international fight against terrorism. That is why international organizations and individual States must work together to help achieve negotiated settlements in all of the worlds worst conflict-ridden zones.
In order to deal with the increasing threat of international terrorism, our intelligence-gathering and law enforcement agencies obviously need to cooperate in ever more close and effective ways. The neutralization of terrorist cells through the arrest and imprisonment of their fanatical adherents, however, can only serve as a stopgap measure unless the root causes of terrorism are addressed as well.
Psychologically terrorists (and especially suicide terrorists) are trained in a climate of paranoia, which includes both a mania of grandeur and a mania of persecution. The mania of persecution, the rage and hatred, may stem originally from genuine grievances or perceived injustices, which fester and become more and more violent because of an inability to achieve ones aims through normal political or economic activities.
Grievances as such, it must be emphasized, can never be an excuse for terrorist activity. There are hundreds of legitimate ways in which grievances can be settled. There is no legitimate justification, I repeat absolutely none for committing acts of terror against ones fellow human beings.
What can we do to make terrorism less attractive as a strategy to those who use it? In the case of political conflicts, it is clear that all parties concerned, including the terrorists themselves, have to accept recourse to negotiation in order to achieve their political goals. The gains to be achieved through negotiation should be sufficiently clear and sufficiently attractive to make terrorism redundant and unattractive.
In the case of ideologically motivated terror, any potential solution is far more difficult to achieve. Ideally, there should be a process of education or re-education with the aim of instilling the basic respect for human life as an inviolable value. But how to achieve this in societies where violence is a way of life, be it within the family or within society at large, and where people feel only contempt for their own lives as well as those of others?
Our free and democratic societies have evolved over centuries by gradually defining the overriding values that they all share in common: respect for human life and dignity, compassion for the suffering of others, tolerance of difference and of diversity.
Terrorists, through their actions, reach the degree zero of humanity and of civilization. Their egos fed by the publicity they gain through the media, they see themselves in the role of heroes and martyrs.
But they cannot operate without financial and ideological support and without a network of communications among themselves and their supporters. They do have their weak points and governments as well as international rganizations need to develop practical plans for containing them. Organizations such as the UN and NATO have each their special role to play in this regard. And I would like to say that the EU has a role to play and also non-governmental organizations. The civilized world may be hurt by random and unpredictable attacks, but we cannot allow it to be destroyed. It is our common task and our sacred duty to do all we can to protect it and strengthen it so that justice and humanity can prevail.
