“Is there really something to celebrate today?” That question lay at the heart of the May 5 lecture delivered by writer and presenter Splinter Chabot on Tuesday at the Domkerk in Utrecht.
Chabot said that darkness, hardening and coarsening are continuing to grow in society and around the world. He questioned how free people really are if they must think twice before hanging a rainbow flag or a Palestinian flag. He also asked what freedom means when research shows that antisemitism is rising.
“Invisible laws float through society,” Chabot said in his speech. “Laws that prescribe how to be, how to behave and how to express yourself. Invisible laws that take shape through a look, an attitude, a remark and sometimes also through the fist of another person.”
Despite this, Chabot said there is still something worth celebrating on Liberation Day. “That is because there is always something that remains, and that is hope,” he said.
Freedom on loan
To illustrate this, he spoke about three women from three different centuries. He highlighted Austrian pacifist Bertha von Suttner (1843–1914), the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and an important force behind the creation of the Peace Palace in The Hague.
He also mentioned Jewish resistance fighter Selma van de Perre (1922–2025), as well as a Ukrainian woman from Kramatorsk, one of the last cities in the Donbas not yet occupied by Russia.
“These three women from three centuries show that there is always hope,” Chabot said.
In his lecture, he compared freedom to a tsunami that can only move freely when dams and dikes are removed. Peace, he said, is passed down through the generations. “We can live in peace today because of what earlier generations have done. Every new generation has the task of protecting peace and expanding freedom for everyone.”
Chabot ended with a warning. “We have peace and freedom on loan,” he said. “Not from the previous generation, but from the next.”
@anp | NEWS BRAINPORT
