SPEECH OF JANNE VIRKKUNEN
Chairman, IPI Board
Delivered at the Opening of the IPI World Congress and 58th General Assembly
Finlandia Hall, Helsinki
7 June 2009

Honoured Speaker of Parliament, Friends and Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen:

We journalists love memorable years, for they give us reason to examine and evaluate past events anew, which often is necessary.

Twenty years ago China’s leadership suppressed a national movement at Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. Armoured tanks of the People’s Freedom Army massacred thousands of demonstrators and silenced organised democratic political demands for at least a generation. A wall of silence was built, and a culture of silence was strengthened.

In Europe on the other hand developments have happily gone in another direction. The two-part division that had existed since the Second World War began to dissolve. Eastern Central European countries began to be free from communism with Poland’s break towards the road of freedom of thought and democracy.

The dark time, which had reigned in these countries for nearly fifty years, had come to an end. Finally, even the Berlin wall, which had symbolised the two-part division, came down. It was a great European moment.

History teaches us that things do not happen by themselves. Changes come with the help of human actions. If there is a firm belief in the rightness of one’s own cause, then the impossible can be changed into the possible.

Organisations are also needed to help those who still end up walking in darkness without the right to think and express themselves freely. If we can help them, let’s do so without question. The right to know, to think, and to express oneself freely is a basic human right.

Unfortunately, this freedom is all too seldom a privilege. In many cases developments have actually gone in the other direction. According to the organisation Freedom House, the world is divided into three kinds of states. Among the countries of the world, around 36 per cent are free, 31 per cent are partly free, and 33 per cent are countries that are not free.

Only 17 per cent of the world’s population, or 1.1 billion people, live in free countries. That number is shamefully low. For all organisations defending freedom of speech including the International Press Institute, there is still very much work to be done.

We know from experience that the desire to limit freedom of speech is also readily carried out in countries that are advanced democratic states. Such limitation is unfortunately not only the special province of dictatorships. Even in Finland, which by comparison is one of the top countries for freedom of speech, an officially backed proposal has been made that would weaken protection for journalists’ sources. The proposal is awaiting political action, and there is reason to hope that the final judgement of the decision-makers will be to bury the proposal.

The first two sentences of our constitution are the following: “World press depends on understanding between peoples and peoples. If peoples are to understand one another, it is essential that they have good information.”

This is a summary of the task of mass communication as our founders wrote it in New York in the year 1950. Unfortunately, in performing this task, journalists even this year have lost their lives. Far too many journalists sit in prison or live and work under pressure.

Today’s ongoing worldwide economic crisis is reducing the resources of the media to perform their basic tasks as the guardian of states and as the exposer of hidden information and hidden intentions. Given the possibilities, we must take care that the media have sufficient power to carry out their basic tasks, for stable democracy is possible only in conditions in which there is freedom of speech and freedom of expression. And the same holds true the other way round: Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are possible only in democratic conditions.

In the current economic crisis we need more information than ever and an ability to analyse and deepen reporting. It is ironic that in these very circumstances media’s resources are threatened with cutbacks.

For resolving the economic crisis there are again two models on offer: the authoritarian and the democratic alternatives.

For three days we have an occasion here in Helsinki in which to discuss the details of these issues, to consider the situation of freedom of speech, and to take a stance on the problems. Already ahead of time I wish to thank all the panelists who have accepted our invitation to participate in these discussions.

We are happy that Mr. Sauli Niinistö, the Speaker of Parliament, is with us here today in the opening session of our congress. Welcome, Mr. Speaker.

We in this meeting unite in the desire to work for the advancement of freedom of speech wherever our help is needed. Together with other organisations for freedom of speech, we can do very much on behalf of journalists whose lives and safety are endangered in the course of carrying out their daily work so that people have the right to know.

Last January I was shocked by the fate of Lasantha Wickrematunge, the Sri Lankan editor-in-chief of the newspaper the Sunday Leader. He predicted his own death. Wickrematunge was shot on his way to work. Three days later his newspaper published his last column. “When I am finally killed, it will be the government who kills me,” Wickrematunge wrote. The violence machine had succeeded – yet again.

Lasantha Wickrematunge is literally a voice from the grave for freedom of speech. After his death he was posthumously awarded Unesco’s World Press Freedom Prize.

Dear Friends, let’s work together so that the world will no longer see new heroes for freedom of the press brutally murdered in the midst of their life’s work.

I wish you all the best and a most successful IPI congress in Helsinki.

Helsinki in 1993.