Cleveringa Professor Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You: ‘Exclusion is dangerous’
Amid rising polarisation and discrimination, lawyer and human rights activist Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You wants to show in her Cleveringa Lecture on 26 November how dangerous exclusion is. ‘We have to resist.’
Gonçalves-Ho Kang You first heard about Rudolph Cleveringa’s protest speech when she was studying law in Leiden. ‘I come from Suriname and had not heard much about what exactly had happened in the Second World War. So the speech was new to me and I was really impressed by his resistance. I also had lectures from Ms Barendsen-Cleveringa (Rudolph Cleveringa’s daughter, Ed.), which brought that history closer.’
Cleveringa Lecture
Every year on (or around) 26 November, the university commemorates the protest speech given by Leiden law professor Rudolph Cleveringa in 1940. On that day, he spoke out in a public lecture against the dismissal of his Jewish colleague Eduard Meijers. After the speech, Cleveringa was arrested by the German occupiers and Meijers was deported first to Westerbork and then to Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he would survive the war.
Years later, the date of that protest speech would her courage. After the coup d'état led by Desi Bouterse in 1980, Gonçalves-Ho Kang You and her husband spoke out against the violations perpetrated and the lack of democracy. Kenneth Gonçalves was one of the 15 Surinamese people executed by the Bouterse regime in December 1982.
When Gonçalves-Ho Kang You fled Suriname in 1983, she arrived in The Netherlands on 26 November. ‘We all need role models we can look up to and respect. Cleveringa resisted the Nazis and consciously accepted the consequences. It gives me courage to see people standing up for their beliefs. And that includes my husband. He stood for what he believed in and the result was fatal.’
Resisting exclusion
Gonçalves-Ho Kang You says it is important we commemorate Cleveringa’s protest speech every year. ‘People forget and new generations do not know about it. So if you do not remember, people will completely forget. In Europe, we are once again in a time of rising populism, polarisation and discrimination. That makes it essential to remember people who resisted exclusion.’
In her inaugural lecture, she wants to show how dangerous exclusion is and why we have to resist. And that takes a conscious effort, says Gonçalves-Ho Kang You. We can only do so if we see others as our equals. As individuals, we can do that by putting ourselves in other people’s shoes and thinking about how we would feel if our parents, child, brother or sister were treated a certain way.
And the state should set an example and ensure it does not discriminate itself. ‘We have had so many scandals I almost don’t dare to mention them: the child benefits scandal, ethnic profiling by the police and Royal Netherlands Marechaussee. So much policy is developed against institutional discrimination and yet so little action is taken against it.’ Examples should be made, she says. ‘Criminal law should be used to punish wrongdoing.’
Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You
Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You worked as a lawyer and later as a State Councillor for the Council of State. She was also active for Amnesty International, the National Bureau against Racism and the Dutch Equal Treatment Commission. She currently holds posts including that of Chair of the Colonial Collections Committee. In 2015, Gonçalves-Ho Kang You was awarded an honorary doctorate by Leiden University for her commitment to human rights, women’s rights in particular.
Text: Dagmar Aarts