Journalists worldwide explore consequences of NATO, EU, capitalism and liberalism

Report

Introduction

The Summer University 2008 (12 to 28 September) gave extraordinary exposures to realities, memorable encounters with personalities and highly relevant exposés on major issues.

For journalists and media professionals from all the continents who participated in the event, the ongoing formation event was not only the occasion to understand the peoples, cultures and life in the Baltic States, but also the opportunity to analyse the consequences of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union (EU) and embracing capitalism and liberalism.

This report is a humble effort to bring to you the experiences, exposures and encounters during these highly enriching experience.

Three Wishes

As a member of the parliament and Summer University 2008 keynote speaker put it: The people of Baltic States set their objectives based on three wishes to be happy: (1) join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to secure themselves, (2) join the European Union to become prosperous, and (3) build good relationship with their neighbours to live in peace. Though they have achieved the first two wishes and to a great extent the third wish, people are not yet happy in many ways.

They now know that NATO really does not give them security, EU intervenes too much in their affairs, big walls are built between their own people living in neighbouring nations, many of them have become poorer than before and the future does not look good with the worldwide economic, political and military turmoil.

The participants travelled extensively in the three Baltic countries: cities, countryside, small towns, coastal regions and hilly areas. The event has explored the following themes during the two-week exposure and study: media, religion, history, art, culture, health, political systems, genocides, European Union, press freedom, mental and physical wellbeing, social projects, underground information diffusion system, minorities such as Karaites, liberalisation of economy and social life.

Eternal fear of Occupation

Baltic States have been willingly and unwillingly under occupation from various forces in the last several centuries. And that fear has not gone yet, especially with memories still fresh of Soviet invasion in the past decades especially in the beginning of 1990s.

That fear has come back especially after the tensions between Georgia and Russia since August 2008. Though situation seems to be calm for the moment, people are not all that calm.

They fear that Russians will be back again. It is only a question of time. And there is no real force that can stop aggression and invasion.

Role of the Church

In the context of such fears, Church is the refuge for all: politicians, atheists, common persons and so on. One should remember that Catholic Church was the only place for people to meet and make their opinions heard under occupation.

Summer University participants had a unique occasion to understand Church’s role by participating on 14 September 2008 at Siluva (Lithuania) in the 400th anniversary celebrations of the apparition of Virgin Mary to Calvinists. The ceremony was attended by all the prominent political authorities as well as heads of Church from the neighbouring countries. The Church pulpit was the ideal place for both political and Church leaders to express their historical and present concerns especially since the tensions between Russia and Georgia in August 2008.

In an interview with the participants, Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne (Germany) who was Pope’s delegate to the celebration of the 400th anniversary celebrations said that bringing people from different parts of the world to one place to share, exchange and spend time together is not luxury but essential. It is the only way to understand and experience the Universal Church. It is more than necessary. It is not tourism but learning and exposure for life and coming generations. Getting out of one’s own country and going to another part of the world is indispensable; it is not wasting money but investing in people for the future and centuries to come.

Summer University has been realising during the last 20 years this dimension of the Universal Church with great courage against all odds and obstacles.

Church has a special call to go against the wind if it is in search for truth. Cardinal Meisner said that at his young age he had some 30 Catholic friends among 3000 non-believers around them. With great courage, they kept the candle burning against all the winds and slowly others began to join them in celebration and communion.

Archbishop Tadeush Kondrusevich of Minsk in his meeting with the participants said that the Church is strong on different fronts in Byelorussia. The main reason for this he explained is the traditional faith. It is not sitting church but going or moving Church. The Church can answer to peoples’ quest for values, spirituality and life after death if we take time to sit with them, accompany them, and share bread with them.

In this spirit, all the churches in Baltic States are involved in many cultural events such as music, concerts and other cultural demonstrations.

Ecumenism

It is one of the difficult domains mainly because of the differences in perceiving ecumenism by various Christian denominations. Though the Church had handed over its temporal power to civilian governments a few centuries ago, some Churches such as the Orthodox Church still hold on to their understanding of territorial integrity.

Therefore the Orthodox Church considers a particular civil state also an ecclesiastical state and prefers one denomination for one State like in the middle ages. If some one belongs to another faith, for example, to Catholic faith in an Orthodox “ecclesiastical state”, though it is governed by civil laws that guarantees religious freedom, it can damage one’s name and reputation and vice versa. In other words, being a Catholic can undermine one’s competence, simply because of the fact that this person is a Catholic.

Besides Christian denominations, there are some other powerful people-oriented religions that grow up in Lithuania. Lithuanian “paganism” is one of them and is considered highly spiritual while the organised religious denominations go on fighting along their differences. These “pagans” are very few up in the hills and they are very popular and effective in giving answers to spiritual quests of the folks.

In this context, the Catholic Church wants to promote ecumenism to bring together all Christian denominations not to argue about doctrinal differences but to find common answers to peoples’ thirst for soul.

One of the solutions is to make things simple. The main difficulty that the Churches face is to make its teachings simple so that common people can teach them. For example, mathematics can be taught by anyone who knows it. Likewise religious teachings must be made simple so that they are understood by common people and transmitted by them as in Hinduism.

This can also avoid the action-reaction chain that has destroyed families and nations: For example parents who are staunch Christians force their children to be also staunch Christians. Then the children react by becoming anti-Christian or even atheists! These atheist children’s children then react against the staunch atheists by becoming conservative Christians. This action-reaction vicious circle has been going on for centuries and no one really cared for a mature or ideal solution.

New Baltic States

President Valdas Adamkus of Lithuania said during his encounter with the participants that he was not allowed to enter his own country during Soviet occupation but for five days in 1972. Now Baltic States have overcome more or less those difficulties of occupation and war. It has been difficult but not impossible.

Now the threat and destruction come from moral decadence. Our young generation in the Baltic States is free but most of them are not aware how they became free. And their abuse of freedom can destroy them and their nation. We are worried about these.

The Lithuanian authorities and partners insisted that they need institutions and programmes like the Summer University to rekindle values that are innate and natural before they fall into decadence. Our young people do need exposure to other peoples and cultures in order to assure them that values and only values can uphold them in time of communism, capitalism, dictatorship, conflicts and war.

Identity and the human person

The new Baltic States are discovering a phenomenon what is rather new:  The concept and identity of the individual or person. Such a concept was not cared for several centuries under kings, churches and communists. They all favoured the collective, societal or common aspect of human person, rather than both the individual and collective aspects.

There was no possibility to explore this aspect as wars and invasions followed one after another and the societal, national or community and even military identity was the solution to repost. As persons were seen as part of a particular collective identity, they were not given the freedom to be themselves: they were entangled in the fight for particular interests.

Persons were classified or put into a caste system stressing their origins and belonging: village, ethnicity, religion, confession, nation, profession and so on. The ultimate identity that is the human person, which is common to all particular identities was completely ignored and neglected.

The new global overtures are helping them understand the individual and collective dimensions of human persons both women and men. It is the first pre-requisite for integral development. The other aspects that help them to be more human are values like respect to the nature and neighbours.

Media

Under occupation, governments dictated the media content. Now more and more government money gets into the media like any capitalist investment and both the government and capitalists have joined hands together to dictate to the media and its professionals. The other dictators are investors like European Union and Russia. Therefore though the Baltic Media is theoretically free, it is not free at all in reality.

The Internet has opened some new avenues for freedom of press and enterprise. Though for the time being the major Internet journals are produced by the existing dailies, publications, radio and television, more and more independent journals are appearing. The major problem is who has the key to finances that can create or put an end to an enterprise. And blogs add some spice to professional media and make it edible.

The great weakness of Internet is that it is still not accessible to many: Those who have no easy facility to use Internet, those who have very little free time, those who live in the country sides and so on. Internet is not yet handy as print or other handy media. Besides, it has a lot of rubbish and people turn to established print media for reliable information.

Culture

Since their independence in early 1990’s, Baltic States have been giving a lot of attention to culture as a solution to understand their own and world realities better so that they can find answers to people’s quests. 

Summer University participants and organisers were invited to an exemplary live TV programme stressing the importance of culture, tradition, innate wisdom, values, identity and human nature.

Highly imaginative cultural events throughout Baltic States have attracted attention from all parts of Europe and now also from other parts of the world. Hence one student who visited the Baltic States said: “I longed for Paris. I believed in Rome. I fell in love with Vilnius.”

Feedback

Participants, resource persons and organisers have given excellent feedbacks on the event. They expressed their great appreciation to all the hosts for their generosity, availability, friendship, and for going out of their own ways to make the programme a real exposure and learning.

Summer University is irreplaceable with any other learning programme on the host nations as it deals in a few weeks with almost all the aspects of the host nations in a friendly, convivial, face-to-face and atmosphere where everyone is equal.

Several of them are planning to revisit these nations in order to make specialised reports as they have very well introduced to these nations and they have reliable friends there. It is an investment for lifetime on world level.

They thanked all organisers for bringing all the people involved in freedom and independence to analyse realities and plans for the future.