1 Natan Sharansky with Jimmy Lai: Hong Kong, the world’s gambit Apple Daily Transcript *Transcript provided by AEI with permission from Apple Daily. Exclusive on Twitter —Natan Sharansky with Jimmy Lai: Hong Kong, the world’s gambit Apple Daily— 1120 - YouTube 02:38 - Jimmy Lai – So, all right good morning we are very happy today to have Natan Sharansky with us. Mark Clifford who is the mediator is here. Mark, why don’t you do some introductions. 02:50 Mark Clifford —Yeah hi good morning of course, we've just heard from Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily, Hong Kong's leading pro-democracy newspaper, a successful entrepreneur and as Jimmy said, Natan Sharansky is our guest today. Mr Sharansky was one of the old Soviet Union's most prominent political prisoners, not a job that one takes on freely of course, he is also a brilliant scientist, a survivor of the Soviet prison system, and now a prominent politician in Israel. So welcome to our show. I think Jimmy has some questions. I think basically we don't want to despair, although we're going through some difficult times in Hong Kong, you've seen much, much worse than people in Hong Kong have seen, and it would be nice to hear a little bit from your example, and what to learn. Jimmy you have a specific question? 03:51 Jimmy Lai – I just think that we are at the crossroads, and I don't, you know, our people had hope and are still hoping, but the hope is dashed, or whatever hope we have will be dashed because under such a high pressure persecutions and clamp down on our freedom and rule of law, it's inevitable that, well, our hope will be dashed. And the more we dash our hope, the weaker we get, as you said in your book, which is the crisis we are facing, so we need the faith, but not everybody like you and me have a God, you know a faith, and so it is also a problem for us now to keep the world's attention to us because we are not allowed to have demonstrations, so the street will not have news, and our legislators, pro-democratic legislators all resigned from the legislative council because they (government) disqualified four of them. So if there's no news, and people’s hope is dashed, it's very difficult for us to hold up the optimism, to hold up the energy to fight. So what is your advice? 5:30 Natan Sharansky — Well, thank you first of all thank you Jimmy for inviting me. I always feel a very deep sympathy to the people in different countries who are striving to be free: [who] want to continue or to start their life with free people and that's ongoing struggle all over the world. Let me share with you my experience from a personal point and more general political point which I think is relevant. And first of all that personal point. I grew up in the Soviet Union without having any freedom: we knew from the beginning, from the age of five, I knew that things which I hear in the family I cannot say publicly. But when my father told me that Stalin died, Stalin was a big dictator in the Soviet Union, but he told me it's a very good thing for us for Jews because we Jews were persecuted, we were in a big danger, and his death is good, so it's good, but don't tell it to anybody. So, and I guess we go to kindergarten and we cry together with all the children about the death of Stalin and they have no idea who is crying really and who is crying like me, knowing that it's a very good thing that it happened. And we were singing songs by the way, that day, about two great leaders of the world, songs of the people, Mao Zedong and Stalin. And I’m singing this song and I know that it's all a lie. That in fact I have to be very happy that Stalin died. 2 But that is the atmosphere in which I grew for the first 20 years of my life, when you know that all the official life is a lie, and you are participating in this lie, but the truth is only for your family. And then, when I came back to my Jewish identity and to my faith, suddenly you feel there are things which are even more important for you than physical survival, and when you have the first time you say what you really think to the authorities, that they really don't want you to belong to your culture, that I want to go back to my people. Your life is changed, you can be arrested, you're searched, you're threatened. And then for years of activism I was watched, followed by KGB, and was persecuted, but suddenly you start feeling that you're a free person. You say what you think, and you do, and you're fighting for things in which you believe. And that was a very liberating experience. I have to say as a man, for many years that I was in prison, and each time they will propose for me to compromise, say publicly that we are right and you're (me) wrong, and you will be released, or they are threatening with the death sentence. I knew that what they proposed to me is to go back to this slavery of lies, to live in this world, and you don't want too. You prefer to be a free person, even in prison, where you really can enjoy speaking your free mind, to be serious. So first of all I have to say—and I saw that there's something which connected many people who are fighting against dictatorship—that this moment of overcoming the fear and feeling that you're fighting with the dictatorship, but you're enjoying the real full life, that something, it was connecting and I looked through all the dissidents in the Eastern Europe from different countries then, and then if you look at the people who are in Arab Spring, in how Egypt or Tunisia and other places how they were overcoming the fear of their authorities, and also I was reading about your demonstrations in Hong Kong of how this feeling of enjoying the freedom, how powerful it is, and it is absolutely universal. But nevertheless we want to get results, we know we don't want simply to die, we want to win. And that's why solidarity of the free world is extremely important, and when I was writing because Jews all over the world were supporting our struggles and democratic society different countries support us we organized our human rights watch, Helsinki group, and there was an organized Helsinki group, that was such a meeting, signing agreement about human rights, so they were all over the world demonstrating solidarity with us. And then when I was in prison for nine years and they were saying to me the world forgot about you. You know how this world works, you know how the Jewish organizations work, how America goes . What is popular today, will not be popular tomorrow, they already forgot about you. And I knew, I knew that they are lying. I was sure that the free world does not forget us. Of course there were people beginning from my wife, and my friends, my country, and many other human rights organizations, who are working very hard that the world would not forget. And I was relying on the fact that this feeling of solidarity with the people who want to live free with the democratic dissidents is very deep. Only, your friends have to find each time the reason, how to remind the world. Sometimes, my wife is coming again to Washington, she goes to the journalists, and they say, “but is your husband still alive?” She just said yes, and they said, “Well look, it's not the news, he's already for seven years alive in prison, when he'll die it will be news.” And then she goes to President Reagan and says “President Reagan, I need your statement in order for it to be news” and you know, President Reagan was very cooperative, and because Margaret Thatcher, and human rights organizations, who were cooperating how to connect it with the needs of us. 3 In the case of China I think it is very important to remind the world what is the danger to the world is totalitarian China. And that's why it is important, if there are in small islands of freedom around China or in general, it's very important that they are the allies of the free world and not Chinese leadership. There are ways to do it, but it needs persistence, it needs stubbornness, it needs creativeness, but I have to say, looking on your dream, I think you are in thousands times better situations than we were. You guys have the opportunity to use the media, you have so many friends, you still can, there was no internet, there was no CNN in my day, there was, . All the international TV was cut by the Soviet Union, and today China cannot cut you as fully as they can cut us in Soviet Union. But it is very important not to lose hope, to enjoy being free every day, I have to say that very quickly in prison I decided that whether I will survive physically or not doesn't depend on me, it depends on KGB, so that's why it should not be my aim.