Category: Violence/nonviolence

I am still  reflecting on the rich experience I had yesterday,
at the lengthy panel discussion on “Religious Contribution to Genocide Prevention”
that my dear friend Andrea Bartoli organized as part of the
International Prayer for Peace.  Andrea, who teaches in the international-relations program at Columbia
University, is also the US representative of the Catholic lay organization
Sant’ Egidio, which organized the whole event.  I came to know Andrea
because of the role that he (and Sant’ Egidio) had played in helping broker
the Mozambique peace accord of 1992.

Highlights of yesterday’s panel, for me, included:

— hearing Qamar-ul Huda, a Muslim staff member of the
US Institute of Peace, talking about the role that Rwanda’s very small population
of Muslims played in helping to save lives during the genocide there in 1994;
hearing him reflect deeply and honestly on the phenomenon of seeing Muslims
kill Muslims in Darfur– and Muslims kill Christians and other non-Muslims,
earlier, in Southern Sudan; and seeing al-Qaeda leaders and others exploiting
Muslim teachings to incite violence and hatred; and listening to him talking
about the continuing need to engage in internal debate within Muslim religious
circles over interpretations of texts and the requirements of “correct” Muslim
practice…

— hearing him talk, to, about a decision he’d learned about that was made
recently by the heads of different religious organizations in the Iraqi city
of Samarra, to jointly rebuild the Askariya Mosque, that was largely
destroyed in the terrible sabotage attack of late February  (why have
I not heard about that elsewhere?)…

— hearing Andrea Bartoli reflect with parallel anguish and honesty
on the pain of having seen Catholics kill Catholics in Rwanda, and on having
come to understand the role the Catholic hierarchy played at a certain time
in buttressing colonial rule and colonial attitudes in Mozambique; and also,
talking about the need for continued efforts to engage in debate and work
inside one’s own religious tradition…

Continue reading “Religions and genocide prevention: the discussion”

Thank G-d! … That CPT-ers Norman, Harmeet, and James were all freed today… And freed, moreover, by troops who found them and released them without firing a shot.
CPT had requested firmly, all along, that the attempts to free their people not be accompanied by any resort to violence. Indeed, it seems quite possible, from the way their discovery and release operation was described in that AP story, that key elements of the operation had been discreetly negotiated in some way… Certainly, many many attempts at such negotiation had been pursued over the nearly four months of their captivity.
CPT has this lovely statement on their site.
I join with them when they say:

We remember with tears Tom Fox, whose body was found in Baghdad on March 9, 2006, after three months of captivity with his fellow peacemakers. We had longed for the day when all four men would be released together. Our gladness today is made bittersweet by the fact that Tom is not alive to join in the celebration. However, we are confident that his spirit is very much present in each reunion.

Also this:

During these past months, we have tasted of the pain that has been the daily bread of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Why have our loved ones been taken? Where are they being held? Under what conditions? How are they? Will they be released? When?

Next week, Monday and Tuesday, I’m going to be at a “US-Iraqi women’s summit” in NYC. Faiza al-Araji is going to be there, which will be great. She, of course, had her own story of having her son Khaled held in terrifying extra-legal detention in Iraq a few months ago.
So I’m thinking of the 12,000-plus Iraqis still held in extra-legal detention… and I’m thinking of the CSM’s plucky, wonderful Jill Carroll.
But it’s also great to know that those three 3 CPT-ers are safe, apparently not badly harmed, and will shortly be reunited with their families and friends. Thank G-d. And thanks, too, to the US and British troops who freed them “without firing a shot.”

People in the west who’ve gotten so riled up about the “violence” (of some– actually, a very, very small proportion) of those Muslims who’ve been protesting against the Danish cartoons might do well to remember that very little, if any, of this violence has been directed at western persons. Nearly all of it that I have learned about has been directed against western property including “symbolic” property, like flags.
Indeed, the casualties related to these protests have not been among westerners. They have all been among Muslim individuals involved in the demonstrations:

One (in Lebanon, at the weekend) was apparently of a demonstrator/?arsonist most likely asphyxiated by his own fire,
Four were of Afghan protesters shot dead by the US-backed Afghan security forces– oops, scratch that, the latest total on the number killed by the US-backed forces in Afghanistan is eleven…
And in Kenya, police today shot and injured one person while trying to keep hundreds of protesters from marching to the residence of Denmark’s ambassador. And one passerby was killed when he was hit by an ambulance rushing away the wounded protester.

Once again we hear dainty voices in the west saying “Eewwww! Look how violent those Muslims are!” But have we heard GW Bush or any other western leader expressing sorrow or condolence for the actual people who have suffered violence as a result of these cartoon-related incidents? Have we heard GWB or any other western leader calling on the security forces in mainly-Muslim countries to find alternatives to the use of lethal violence in their actions against local protesters?
Not yet…
And of course, I’m just holding my breath for our President to “take the lead” and announce that from here on out the United States will foreswear the use of violence in all its dealings with the world. Now that would be a fine thing to do.

Lauri Perman, who’s the presiding clerk of Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), of which my Quaker Meeting is a part, is asking people to hold the four CPT abductees “in the Light” every day at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. (That’s Quaker lingo for “pray for them.”) She is also asking us to hold in the Light their abductors and all those who are working for their release.
Here is a collection of Arabic-language materials about the abductees and the work the CPT has been doing in Iraq, and appeals for the release of the four.
Here is the CPT’ website’s main page on the abductions.
Here is a new blog where you can post (as comments) message of support for the abductees’ families.

A short but very moving photo essay on the BBC website about a victim of post-war trauma and his family.

Today is the 60th anniversary of the massacre of Sétif, a town in a remote area of eastern Algeria where in May 1945 the “Free French” colonial forces decided to enact a colonial massacre against the indigenes.
Here’s an account (in French) of an appeal that Algerian President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika launched to mark the occasion today.
Here’s the Babelfish translation of the lead to that piece (as improved by myself):

ALGIERS (Reuters) – Abdelaziz Bouteflika called this weekend on France to recognize its responsibility forthe massacres for tens of thousands of Algerians who had gone out into the streets, May 8, 1945, to claim their independence at the time when Europe was celebrating the victory over the Nazi Germany.
“The Algerian people await from France a gesture which would liberate the French conscience”, stated the Algerian president in a speech delivered Saturday evening in S

Can someone tell me why 20,000 whitefolks– most of them reportedly Ozzies or New Zealanders, and many of them young– would flock to a chilly shore in Turkey early today to commemorate an extremely ill-conceived, British-led assault on the shore of a distant Muslim country that ended up being a complete military fiasco?
It was a big event. Both the Australian and New Zealand Prime Ministers were there. Britain sent Prince Charles. (I guess Tony was too busy running in his current election campaign and trying to dodge questions about a more recent british assault on a Muslim land.)
On so many different scores, the UK-France-Anzac assault on Gallipoli in 1915 was a deep, deep embarrassment. Why on earth would people from the invading countries even want to remember it (except it as a terrible object lesson in what not to do?) And why would so many of them have flocked to Gallipoli today to “commemorate” the 90th anniversary of one of the campaign’s key battles?
I do recall, growing up in Middle England in the 1950s, that in the semi-public park opposite my home there was a broad plinth built– apparently for some further memorial that never in the end materialized atop it– and it was mysteriously engraved “Gallipoli 1915”.
Maybe better that the memorial there never did get finished?
Here’s the summary of the Gallipoli campaign, culled from that great “First World War. com” website linked to above:
— A young (and rash) Winston Churchill was the Secretary of the Navy. He insisted on launching the operation against the advice of most of the professional military and naval thinkers. (H’mmm.)
— The first attempt to land British and allied forces on Turkish soil at Gallipoli was made in mid-February 1915. It failed. The first successful landings weren’t made till April 25. Three subsequent attempts to enlarge those beachheads were repulsed by the Turks.
— By August or so, the British forces, commanded by Ian Hamilton, had a total of three beachheads. Each was, unfortunately, still overlooked by Turkish positions. “Confidence in the operation in London and Paris was dwindling. Nevertheless Churchill pressed both governments to provide continued support.”
— In October, Hamilton received news that he would soon be ordered to evacuate the peninsula. He protested, and was replaced. London didn’t get its act together to actually order the evacuation till December, by which time the evacuation was extremely hazardous.
— Campaign Summary:

Some 480,000 Allied troops had been dedicated to the failed campaign. British casualties (including imperial forces) amounted to approximately 205,000. French losses were estimated at around 47,000. Turkey incurred around 250,000 casualties.

Oh my God, can you imagine all those families stripped of their young men? And for what? All of World War 1, everywhere, was simply one long and quite unmitigated disaster.
But my question remains: why on earth would those young Ozzies and Kiwis be so eager to travel to Gallipoli and memorialize what happened there?
The militaristic Ozzie PM, John Howard, blustered on to the effect that,

Continue reading “Gallipoli?”

You can now download and read a paper on “Religion and violence” that I first presented at a special colloquium on world religions that the American Academy of Religion held in Atlanta, Georgia, in November 2003.
Many of the papers presented there, including mine, will be published in an upcoming special edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, which is published by Oxford University Press.
Well, I’ve been kind of eager for the paper to be published and out there, so I could share it with a bunch of people and get some discussion going on what I said/wrote in it… The JAAR publishing process has seemed to me extremely lengthy but then I guess that’s in the nature of academic publishing. (As opposed to, for example, blogging.)
Now, I just heard that this edition of JAAR will be coming out this December. And here’s the neat thing about the rights to the text that I retain under the terms of the contract with OUP: I can “mount” the pre-published version of the Article–I’m quoting directly from OUP’s rights Agreement here–on my personal Web site, “as long as [I] acknowledge that the Article has been accepted for publication by OUP.”
Okay, I think I’ve acknowledged that.
Actually I’m just re-reading the Agreement here. Even after publication I am “entitled to use parts or all of the Article in other publications written or edited by [my]self, providing that a full acknowledgement is given to the Journal and to Oxford University Press…”
I guess I’ll just go back into the text of the Article, as I recently uploaded it here, and put that acknowledgement in there at the top, and then I can publish it here myself forever…
Done.

With all the news coverage recently of the 60th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Auschwitz there was, as predictable, pitifully little mention of the 500,000 Roma people (Gypsies) who were killed in the Holocaust– some 21,000 of whom were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The Romani word for the genocide/Holocaust that their people suffered at the hands of the Nazis is porraimos, the “devouring”.
I’ve been re-reading Isabel Fonseca’s outstanding 1995 book, “Bury me standing: The Gypsies and their journey”. The whole of Chapter 7 is about the “devouring”.
Of Auschwitz-Birkenau she writes:

The site of the Zigeunerlager, or Gypsy camp, is marked on the wall map in the arched entrance to the vast pitch of Birkenau. It was in the row of barracks farthest from the main gates, which meant that the Gypsies had a good view of both the gas chambers and the crematoria. Apart from a few crumbling brick chimneys, there is nothing left of the thirty-eight-barrack Gypsy camp. (p.254)

The whole chapter makes very, very tough reading. Josef Mengele was particularly interested in performing his vile experiments on Gypsies. The stories of Gypsy suffering in the camps– told mainly by Jewish or Polish survivors, for there were pitifully few among the Gypsies themselves–are all extremely upsetting.

Mieczyslaw Janka, a Polish survivor, remembers the Gypsy family camp next to the hospital at Birkenau. “The Gypsy men would accompany our singing while their women danced. For this we would throw them bits of onion and cigarettes. One night the Gypsies were taken away and burned.” Outsiders’ recollections of the Zigeunerlager, cut off as always from other inmates, were often of sounds–we heard them (they would say), their singing, their playing, their crying, their moans and screams, and then, “one night,” their silence. That night was August 2, 1944. (p.266)

Fonseca, who is herself Jewish, soberly charts the many ways in which the suffering of the Roma has been ignored or minimalized in mainstream narratives of the Holocaust in the west. For example, she writes this about the 65-member U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, founded in 1979:

Continue reading “Remembering the “devouring””

President Bush and Condi Rice have been stepping up their rhetoric against Iran, accusing the regime there of being undemocratic (true) and of harboring ambitions to acquire a nuclear arsenal (unknowable).
I think it’s time to go back and give the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) a good, close reading, and to think a lot harder about what role we want nuclear arsenals to play in our world. The treaty is still, of course, in force.
First then, its text. To be precise, Article 6, to which the US like all other parties to the treaty is subject:

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

What does the wording of this article tell us about the kind of role that people back in 1968, when the treaty was signed, wanted to see nuclear weapons playing in world affairs?
And what role, actually, do we want to see nuclear weapons play today?

Continue reading “Nuclear disarmament: a reminder”