Speech Living History Forum, Kulturhuset Stockholm 10 March 2008
Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, Minister for Culture

Speech given at Living History Forum

Thank you, for the booklet. I will study it with great interest, and also follow your continued work.

This year, we give particular attention to the 60th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the adoption of the Genocide Convention.

Democracy and human dignity are constantly being challenged. Democracy is vulnerable - it can never be taken for granted. We must always win new generations over to humanism and compassion. Gaining compassion for others is a constant struggle. Individuals have a responsibility for this, as does society.

Communism is an ideology that has claimed - and continues to claim - many victims.

The atrocities of communism are also quite recent, in facts they are in parts of the world still going on.

Mass murder, oppression, informing on others, torture, show trials and labour camps are documented elements of practically applied communism.

We all have a responsibility to make sure that this stops, and that it does not fade from our memories. There are those who present a glossed over picture of acts, done in the name of communism. This is a false and dangerous picture.

In the same way that we must preserve the memory of atrocities committed by Nazism, we have to remember and highlight the atrocities committed in the name of communism.

We must all the time be reminded of the painful periods of our history, so as to continue to safeguard the inviolable human dignity, which forms the basic premise of democracy.

Through its commission to the Living History Forum, concerning communism's crimes against humanity, this Government wants to highlight and inform - not least the generation currently growing up - about the dark history of communism.

It is my personal conviction - and that of our Government - that there is much too little knowledge in our country of communism's atrocities, and that there is a need to spread more facts about genocide, and atrocities committed in communist regimes.

Finally, I would like to thank the Living History Forum, for arranging this event in The House of Culture, with so many interesting speakers and important programme items.