USA SECRETARY OF STATE HILARY CLINTON ENDORSES THE POWER OF PLAYS IN FIGHT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

On Monday, December 14, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted the
importance of the arts and artists in her remarks at Georgetown University
on the Human Rights Agenda for the 21st Century.  During a question and
answer session, Secretary of State Clinton was asked about the importance of
the arts and artists in helping to promote human rights.  In her reply,
Clinton stated:


    "I remember some years ago seeing a play about women in Bosnia during
the conflict there.  It was so gripping.  I still see the faces of those
women who were pulled from their homes, separated from their husbands, often
raped and left just as garbage on the side of the road.  So I think that
artists both individually and through their works can illustrate better than
any speech I can give or any government policy we can promulgate that the
spirit that lives within each of us, the right to think and dream and expand
our boundaries, is not confined, no matter how hard they try, by any regime
anywhere in the world.  There is no way that you can deprive people from
feeling those stirrings inside their soul.  And artists can give voice to
that.  They can give shape and movement to it.  And it is so important in
places where people feel forgotten and marginalized and depressed and
hopeless to have that glimmer that there is a better future, that there is a
better way that they just have to hold onto."