Global Policy Forum

By Nora Boustany

If certain countries fail to protect their homegrown defenders of human rights and democracy, why not create for them a new nationality as a mark of international solidarity? This new identity would be universal, certifying their status as citizens of the world, and helping to shield them from harm or unfair treatment by governments opposed to their causes.

That was the idea behind the Freedom Passport started two years ago by a group of members of the European Parliament, the legislative arm of the European Union based in Strasbourg, France. Passport holders include rights activists and dissidents whose lives and freedoms have been threatened, such as Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi and Nizar Nayyouf, a dissident Syrian journalist. Other recipients come from Tunisia, Iran, China, Cuba, Cambodia, Turkey, Angola, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Mauritania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Vietnam, Kosovo and Guinea. The passport cannot be used to traverse borders. It is, however, a concrete affirmation of moral support for the holders' efforts in defense of human rights and democracy. With the backing of the EU's 15 member states, it provides them a sense of security.

Ari Vatanen, the Finnish member of the European Parliament and former World Rally champion, was in Washington this week to meet with Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.) and to attend a hearing by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on human rights and military assistance in Central Asia.

At the behest of McCain, who is concerned about human rights abuses in Kazakhstan, Vatanen proposed Akezhan Kazhegeldin, the former prime minister of Kazakhstan and leader of the opposition there, to receive the document. Kazhegeldin was granted the Freedom Passport in Brussels this month. Another figure sponsored by the European legislator for a Freedom Passport was Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy, whose party has suffered significant political violence, including the killing of some of its candidates.

Passport holders are chosen after an extensive screening process.

Tunisian university professor Moncef Marzouki was released from house arrest after he received the Freedom Passport early this year. Two other recipients, Flora Brovina of Kosovo and Tunisia's Rachida Ben Salem, were released from prison as the Freedom Passport was given to them. "It is pressure. We let the governments know these passports are being issued. They get the press clippings from the European countries. These governments know . . . they are under the microscope," Vatanen explained.

Tanned, tall, broad-shouldered and still very much the athlete, Vatanen has driven around the world discovering what tourists don't see. The images of poverty and oppression in the sandy stretches of the Sahara or African hinterland, in highland hamlets in the far reaches of Asia and the tropical jungles of the Southern Hemisphere, reminded him of his own family's isolation and vulnerability in Karelia, a part of Finland lost to Russia in 1944. His mother and her brother often related their experience as teenagers on a bitterly cold night in 1939 when they were trying to steer their cows to more sheltered terrain to avoid feared bombing by the Bolsheviks. "Imagine the fright of those teenagers, or what it felt like in a shelter during the bombing," he said.

He said he was sensitized by his mother's stories and the displacement of her family from their birthplace, Sortavala, a picturesque little lakeside town.

"We are not safe just because we live in the occidental world," said Vatanen, who went to Algeria to witness the country's recent election. "To see people so resigned and apathetic, and knowing they are only a few kilometers away, earning 10 percent of what we earn in Europe, is not something to ignore," he warned. It is a nine-mile swim from Morocco to Gibraltar.

"If the situation in any of those countries explodes, it will do so in our lap," he cautioned, in reference to hundreds of thousands of frustrated youths seeking havens and employment in Europe. "Whether people live in Tibet or Timbuktu, none of us have chosen our birthplace or our parents."

He is neither a visionary nor a dreamer, he said, neither conservative nor liberal. "I am a character traveling on thin ice, I enjoy breaking late," he said, using an expression from his rally days, which he will bring to an end next year. "To me, life is not about tactics and calculation but about believing in one's intuition because it is honest."

"Whatever the outcome, accept it, otherwise you will be bitter," he said, noting that his philosophy was tested when a near fatal crash left him severely wounded and depressed in the early 1980s. He rebounded and eventually went on to win other races.

Vatanen dismisses questions about his personal life. "I am a European and I belong to the human family," said the parliamentarian who lives with his family in France and commutes between his offices in Strasbourg and Brussels. On weekends he retires to his winery and farm in the French countryside.

"We should defend humanity, otherwise the world family is on a slippery slope. We all fall short on ideals, maybe the closest person in recent history who made her mark was Mother Teresa. She made ice melt in the heart of enemies and she served everyone," he said. "Ice and distrust do not melt when you attack someone, but by doing what she did. Her deeds were so disarming."

The way his group helps, Vatanen explained, is by focusing on some individual's dire circumstances, publicizing the support for that person from Europe and thereby "putting a light to that darkness."

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