The following transcript was provided by Documenting Ukraine, Institute for Human Sciences (IWM). The Speech to Europe is an annual event jointly organized by the IWM, the ERSTE Foundation, and Wiener Festwochen in cooperation with the Jewish Museum Vienna.

On Europe Day, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Ukrainian human rights defender and director of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Center for Civil Liberties, delivered this year’s Speech at Vienna’s Judenplatz.

The Europe with a future: Values must be defended

When you know history, it is impossible to idealize. The twentieth century brought two devastating world wars, terrible colonial wars, millions of deaths, and the complete dehumanization of humankind, which reached its most concrete form in the Holocaust and Nazi concentration camps. The horrific lessons of the past demanded decisive action. Responsibility for what had been perpetrated was codified in the slogan ‘Never again’. Governments created the United Nations system and signed international agreements. The Schuman Declaration inaugurated a unified European project. The idea that every person is free and equal in dignity and rights came to characterize the new postwar humanism.

But evil cannot be vanquished once and for all. Each day we make a choice. And democracy, the rule of law, and human rights were realized in practice in only part of Europe. Meanwhile, the totalitarian Soviet Gulag was never condemned or punished. There has been no accountability. And thus evil keeps coming back: the Srebrenica massacre; the destruction of Grozny, a city of half a million people; the Russian bombardment of Aleppo; the firebombing of Mariupol and the bodies of people killed on the streets of Bucha.

Now, in the twenty-first century, how will we defend human beings, their dignity, their rights and their freedom? Can we rely on the law – or do only weapons matter?…

https://www.eurozine.com/no-peace-without-freedom-no-justice-without-law/