On Saturday, May 17, the Global Human Rights Torch Relay took place in Toronto, as part of a 40 country, 150-city tour to expose the human rights atrocities of the Chinese regime before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
With its motto 'The Olympics and Crimes Against Humanity Cannot Co-exist in China', the Torch relay rally attracted representatives from the Tibetan, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Burmese, Uighur communities, as well other human rights activists, including Canadian Olympic icon Elvis Stojko.
Alide Forstmanis, the President of Latvia National Federation in Canada was one of more than a dozen speakers at the event. In her speech (presented below), she urges the West to recognize the role of communist ideology in contributing to the crimes perpetrated by the communist totalitarian regimes in China and in the rest of the world.
The crimes of communism against humanity belong to the enormous and most tragic catastrophes that have ever affected the world. These crimes are very well documented and known for many years. Similar crimes have been committed in all countries where the teachings of Marx and Lenin have been used, with similar starting points, and in general identical motives and objectives –in countries such as, Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba and Africa. The similarities between the different communist dictatorships are much greater than the differences, and the crimes of communism are both predictable and expected.
The Marxist theories became in the Leninist Soviet Union, and in Mao's China, a brutal force that did not tolerate contradiction. With all opposition crushed and power totally concentrated, there was no counter force that could restrain the acts of cruelty. All past and current communist countries are totalitarian, [and they] had and have no respect for human dignity.
However, there is still strong opposition among many in the Western world to acknowledge the direct link between communist ideology, and the crimes committed where this ideology has been put into practice. Although many of these tell us that they defend democracy, freedom of expression, human rights and an open society.
The people that admire communism, base it on a combination of denial and defense. That the victims of torture, terror and famine can be counted in the millions is persistently denied as exaggeration, while those suffering have been defended as necessary sacrifices to reach the communist society.
In a 2007 poll in Sweden, students aged 15-25 were asked about Auschwitz and Gulag. 95 percent knew that Auschwitz was a death camp but only 10 percent about the Soviet equivalent - the Gulag. A similar poll here in Canada would probably have the same results.
The crimes of communism must never be forgotten. It is important to know about the deportations, mass murders and famines, but in the right context. It is not enough to know just the history, it is also important to understand it. Marx, Engels, Trotskij, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-Il, Castro are from the same blood drenched line of history.
The occurrences in Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and North Korea were not isolated events. They were the logic consequences of an idea, a scientific theory and moral vision, which enticed millions: the communist ideology.
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