Gerald Nagler; Chair of the Swedish Helsinki Committee for Human: « The Human Rights Movement and the Helsinki Process, » 4/30/02. He is born 1929 in Vienna, Austria. Hs parents came with him to Sweden when he was two years old. He has grown up in Stockholm.
Gerald Nagler – Sweden
On the occasion of observance of the fifth anniversary of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on 11 February 2000, the president of the Swedish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights Gerald Nagler was presented with a special award.
Nagler had supported establishment of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the most difficult times in 1994, as well as this organization’s membership in the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights.
Two questions in the berkeley interview: Looking back now at this process, what lessons did you personally learn about the struggle for human rights and human freedom? Is there something that emerges by doing this that isn’t apparent to somebody who reads historical accounts of this process? – I think that a few individuals can change the situation, and even change the world. People like Yuri Orlov and Sakharov and Vaclav Havel and so on, have shown this personally, and Michnik and many others. They need the support, and we can give them that support. It’s important for all of us. I mean, I was very new at that time. I came to Prague and I met Havel in one of his periods when he was out of prison, and I made a stupid comment. I said, « What can we do to help you? » And he said he would appreciate if I would reformulate the question. He tried gently to tell me that we are all in the same boat. If your rights are violated one place, sooner or later it carries over. [So] I did not talk about helping them, I talked about doing things together, where they did the great and important and dangerous job, and we were the support group
That’s an important note that should motivate human rights workers: it is a universal struggle, as opposed to just saving particular individuals in particular places. – The world consists of individuals. So it’s for all of us.
For more, go to the site with the berkeley interview, for deeper insight.
links:
First World Forum in Poland;
He is part of the foreign advisory board of the Albanian Human Rights Group;
the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights;
Destroying Ethnic Identity;