Four Freedoms Curriculum Resource
Ang San Suu Kyi - Freedom from Fear (Excerpt)
1990
(approx 6 minutes)
In an age when immense technological advances have created lethal weapons which could
be, and are, used by the powerful and the unprincipled to dominate the weak and the
helpless, there is a compelling need for a closer relationship between politics and ethics at
both the national and international levels. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of
the United Nations proclaims that ‘every individual and every organ of society’ should
strive to promote the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings regardless of
race, nationality or religion are entitled. But as long as there are governments whose
authority is founded on coercion rather than on the mandate of the people, and interest
groups which place short-term profits above long-term peace and prosperity, concerted
international action to protect and promote human rights will remain at best a partially
realized struggle. There will continue to be arenas of struggle where victims of oppression
have to draw on their own inner resources to defend their inalienable rights as members
of the human family.
The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the
need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's
development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions
with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success.
Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old
order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform
and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human
rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make
sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill
will, ignorance and fear.
Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the
order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends,
family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A
most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom,
condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage
which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a
people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free
themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state
