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Obama Should Support Democratic Dissidents from Repressive Countries

[Los Angeles Times] Natan Sharansky - Direct contact with dissidents from repressive foreign countries has never been popular with the State Department. It sees these nondemocratic regimes as actors with whom it must inevitably find a modus vivendi, and it sees meeting with dissidents as a provocation that could undermine those relationships. Though it seems ridiculous in hindsight, the State Department prevented President Ford from meeting with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the prominent Soviet dissident and Nobel laureate. The Dalai Lama met with President Clinton a few times, but in order not to irritate Chinese leaders, he was never received in the Oval Office. However, this policy changed under President Bush. During his tenure, he openly met with more than 100 dissidents. Meeting the leader of the free world transforms the dissident in the eyes of his people from a lonely Don Quixote to the person who can expose the truth about their suffering to the outside world and influence the world to take action to address it. In the 1970s, when members of the U.S. Congress, beginning with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, started openly meeting with dissidents during their official visits to Moscow, it had a tremendous influence. Although these meetings would later become part of the charges against me for high treason, we knew that the only thing more dangerous for our cause was that we would be ignored by the outside world for the sake of realpolitik.
2008-11-25 08:00:00
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