Commentary: The bond of values and interests
When a cartoon by Kurt Westergaard was published in 2005 in a Danish newspaper, many Muslims took offense, and a number of violent riots broke out abroad. Westergaard was even the target of several death threats and an attempt to kill him earlier this year.
Chancellor Angela Merkel used his example to expound on the freedom of expression and freedom of the press, but also to talk about the responsibilities tied to freedom and about her own respect for freedom, after having grown up under a communist dictatorship in East Germany.
“The secret to freedom is courage,” Merkel said, quoting the fifth century Greek statesman Pericles. To practice freedom requires courage, she said, in fact each day anew, in small ways as well as large.
Merkel’s speech at a ceremony honoring Westergaard has led to some breathless media coverage, for the it was her “most explosive appointment” while the Bild-Zeitung called it “most courageous.” The fact that both may well be right underlines just how controversial it has become to defend Western values in the face of Islamist extremism.
The 75-year-old Westergaard has been living under police protection for the past five years for drawing Muhammad with a bomb-shaped turban in one of his 12 cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The illustrations triggered riots around the world that caused at least 50 deaths, while the paper and the Danish government came under pressure from Muslim countries to retract the cartoons.
“Colloquium” is a gathering in Potsdam for leading European journalists. That does not contradict the claim that Europe is a place where freedom of faith and religion, as well as respect for faith and religion, are a highly valued commodity, Merkel said.
Merkel explained how the fall of the Berlin Wall on the night of Nov. 9, 1989, was set off by the questions posed by an Italian and a West German journalist in an East Berlin press conference. News of an immediate change in travel regulations for East Germans was broadcast quickly by western media, even though it was not supposed to go into effect until the next day. Tens of thousands of East Germans that night rushed to border crossings between east and west, and by midnight the gates were opened.
The effect of a precise question at the right time, the freedom to ask this question, and above all the freedom to report on the answer unedited, unchanged and immediately are extremely valuable and should never be taken for granted, Merkel said.
The chancellor talked about the questions of balance that go with the daily work of journalism and similar questions of balance she faces as a politician. Should the German chancellor hold the keynote at this event, should she meet with the Dalai Lama, should she address reports of restrictions on press freedom with the new Ukrainian president on his first visit to Berlin or wait until the second meeting? Merkel said she answered all these questions with “yes” for the one reason that has been her guide in her political career: German politics stands for its interests bound by values, inwardly as well as outwardly. Values and interests belong together.
She stressed that freedom — individually, in politics, and for the media — is not without conditions. Freedom is always and for everyone tied to responsibility, she said. It is a coin with two sides. On one side is the freedom from something and on the other is the freedom for something. What distinguishes Germany and Europe is the way they handle diversity, Merkel said.
“Freedom — I have already said this often — is for me personally the happiest experience of my life,” the chancellor said. “Even almost 21 years after the overwhelming gift of freedom with the fall of the Wall and 20 years after the achievement of German unity, there is still nothing that inspires me more, nothing that motivates me more, nothing that more strongly fills me with positive emotions than the power of freedom.”
Wolf D. Fuhrig of Jacksonville holds a doctorate in public law and government from Columbia University in New York City.