BORDERLINE

Where does the borderline lie behind which our political identity no longer allows us to be friends with someone?

Have you ever asked yourself this question? Unfortunately, I've had to. When recently a close old friend of mine dropped a bomb during a telephone conversation. My own good old friend told me she believed that most of the people thrown in jail and murdered in Russia today deserved it. And then she repeated it once again too, so it was no slip of the tongue.

I had to slide down against the door in my hallway and sit on top of the shoes piled up on the floor to come to my senses. I knew many Russians thought that way. But they were the kind of Russians I did not call my friends. They were not invited to my birthdays, had not spent beautiful late hours at candle-lit cafes listening to my intimate secrets.

Everything is getting better in Russia , my friend said. And whatever was wrong was equally wrong in any other country in the world, just the same.

No, that is not true. If only one tenth of what has been published by the few independent journalists in Russia would be published concerning the government here in Holland, the cabinet would have to resign immediately.

The most recent example is Minister of Justice Piet Hein Donner's immediate resignation last September after a report was published revealing that the government had not provided for enough safety at the illegal immigrants' detention center at Schiphol Airport, where 11 people died in a fire in 2005.

And the journalists who wrote about this case did not have to fear they would be killed either.

I almost had to hang up on my friend. It has been several weeks. Has she given it a thought? Maybe she has. Yet I can see her joining the crowd of Russians rushing along the city's main boulevard, not willing to think.

Maybe that is simply what they want. Maybe they just see what's better for them in completely different categories? Different than justice, privacy and significance of human life?

“You have to learn to see past one's political believes and forgive one for being temporarily blind”, my mother told me.