State Violence (3 page)

Not all attempted solutions are praiseworthy. Sometimes we are deceived by the rhetoric of propaganda. The Roman historian Tacitus gives us the response of Calgracus, a British chief in the north of England to the conquest of the Roman legions under Agricola –
ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant
‘they make a wilderness and they call it peace'. His remark can be applied to wars today. We hear often that fifty thousand American troops died in Vietnam; we are seldom told that three million Vietnamese died. A million Algerians died in their war of independence. Robert Fisk has revealed the savagery of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut in his book
Pity the Nation
. However just in principle the offensive against Sadam Hussein, the Gulf War in terms of civilian casualties resulted in perhaps the greatest single western atrocity since the devastation of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which latter events were once described by Pope Paul VI as a ‘butchery of untold magnitude'.

How do we face the tremendous discord in our world today? – ferocious new means of warfare threatening a savagery surpassing that of the past, deceit, subversion, terrorism, genocide, and forms of structural violence where resources and the control of resources are the property of one group who use them not for the good of all but for their own profit.

I think that since the last Great War the concept of ‘Peace' has ideologically replaced the glorification of war. Slowly different governments have made public declarations of their past inhumanity to man. Reconciliation requires repentance as a first step. How can we repent for the enslavement of Africans, for the genocide of the Indians of North and South America and other indigenous peoples, for colonialism, for domination, oppression and aggression? Germany has done it for the immeasurable suffering it caused. Could the former allies not also ask forgiveness for the fire storms inflicted on Hamburg and the bombing of Dresden? Consider the magnificent words of John Baker, Anglican bishop of Salisbury. ‘I consider it is perfectly right for Englishmen – as I and some of my friends have done – to go over to Ireland and say, “Look I am sorry”. Not just we are sorry, but I am sorry for what we have done to bring about the problems you now face. And I believe that it would be an enormous step forward in the whole situation if our own political leaders, preferably the Prime Minister – I tried this on when Margaret Thatcher was in power – were actually to say something like that in a speech. Not to say we think that everything we're doing at the moment is wicked or anything like that, but to accept responsibility for having brought the situation or contributed to bringing the situation to where it is now. And that in itself is very important. You can't make other people forgive you, but you can at least say, “we need to be forgiven”, and I think that is a very important Christian insight.'

Pope John Paul in his homily at Coventry Cathedral said, ‘Peace is not just the absence of war. It involves mutual respect and confidence between peoples and nations. It involves collaboration and binding agreements. Like a cathedral, peace must be constructed patiently and with unshakeable faith'.

Because of the interdependence of the world we look to international organisations for solutions. They have mushroomed since the end of the last world war. Pope Paul VI called the United Nations the last hope for peace. However, it is clear that its bureaucracy and outdated Security Council greatly hamper its work. I think public opinion is more than disappointed in its failure to act in Rwanda. The same pope once said, ‘If you wish peace, defend life'. He would be more than disappointed at the United Nations Preparatory Committee's choice of death rather than life in its contraceptive proposals for African countries for the International Conference on Population and Development to be held in Cairo.

The anxiety and impatience world disorder creates must be met personally with a spirit of strength. The temptation to shut ourselves off from the magnitude of the problem must be met with the toil of taking one small step at a time. The temptation to look only to our own welfare must be matched with a spirit of love which esteems the dignity, the rights and liberty of each individual and which protects our neighbours against degradation, bondage and injustice. Can we make the tender mercy of God present in a world of violence, oppression and injustice by our active forgiveness?

And as little individuals faced with such huge problems what can we do? A little story to end – ‘It was a chilly, overcast day when the rider saw the little sparrow lying on its back in the middle of the road. Reining on his mount he looked down and inquired of the little creature, ‘Why are you lying upside down like that?'

‘I heard the heavens are going to fall today,' replied the bird.

The rider laughed. ‘And I suppose your spindly legs can hold up the heavens?'

‘One does what one can,' said the little sparrow.

In Northern Ireland there are some welcome signs of peace:

1.
The major developments in Europe, namely the creation of a Single Market and the drive towards European political union, have profound implications for relations between Great Britain and Ireland. Britain is no longer interested in Ireland from its national security point of view. The forces of history and the forces of economics are marching with great speed in Europe and they will take us along with them. The fear of Ireland's links with her European enemies once led Britain to colonise Ireland. Now the reverse is happening. Ireland's renewed links with Europe will draw us not only into friendship with Britain, witness the Anglo-Irish agreement, but into friendship with other European states. As Germany increasingly becomes the economic centre of Europe the Irish population in Germany will increase. The old German-Irish friendships of the early and late middle ages are reawakening. The Irish government should promote these Irish-German cultural links. They could bring German investment in Ireland and the north would certainly look towards a south that is economically sound.

2.
Cultural groups in the north are engaged in a quiet revolution – They are searching deeply in their hearts – Who are we? What are we? Are our traditions necessarily opposed as in the past? Could we share our heritage and enrich one another?

3.
Dialogue is the new bright word. It has burst upon the media with the news that Protestant ministers have engaged in talks with loyalist paramilitaries. We remember, however, that the Secretary of State, Mr Peter Brooke, the former Taoiseach Mr Charles Haughey, and recently Cardinal Cahal Daly, have hinted at a place at the negotiation table for republicans should the IRA call a ceasefire. Now is the time for this dialogue to gain momentum. Church leaders and political leaders can not move the dialogue unless the groundswell of frequent and varied talking on the ground brings them along. On this subject I would recommend that the south should form a Peace Corps, modelled on the good aspects of the American Peace Corps founded by President John F. Kennedy. Peace must not be confined to fine words and fine gestures. Our Christian testimony must be reaffirmed by deeds. This Peace Corps would work for justice and peace. Young professionally trained southern Irish men and women of all religions, and none, could give years to the investigation of complaints of injustice and discrimination in Northern Ireland. They would be the living alternative to the use of violence. By the dynamism of spiritual and ethical forces allied to professional skills they could reassure people that their problems will not be forgotten. The Peace Corps could win the trust of all in Northern Ireland, Catholic and Protestant, in working with the governments in Dublin, London, and Belfast, with Amnesty international and the United Nations, to restore a sense of trust and confidence among all the people of the north.

This evening we personally receive the peace of Christ in the celebration of the Eucharist. We thank God for peace and beseech him time and time again to grant us peace. We ask for the grace to be witnesses to peace before the world, to serve the Church in peace, to serve our community in peace, to serve our country in peace.

Sermon preached in St Francis Church, Cork, Sunday 8 March 1992, organised by PEACE (Prayer Enterprise and Christian Effort). Expanded for International Conference on Religion and Conflict, Armagh, 20–21 May 1994.

I am indebted to the Pastoral Letter of the German Bishops, Gerectigkeit schafft Frieden, 18 April 1983, and the Pastoral Letter of the USA bishops, The Challenge of Peace, God's Promise and Our Response, 3 May 1983, for many of the ideas in this paper.

ADHMED KASSIM

Jesus did not redeem the world out of nothing;

he redeemed it out of a little boy's satchel,

That day in the desert

when he fed the five thousand with five barley loaves and two fish,

all that the youngster had.

The boy was reluctant to part with them.

His mother had prepared his lunch

at daybreak,

kissed his forehead

and bade him farewell.

Jesus did not throw a feast out of nothing,

he multiplied the boy's generosity.

The child emptied his bundle,

gave up his meal to be fed on words.

Jesus learned his first lesson.

On the fourth day of February

nineteen hundred and ninety-one,

Black Crows gathered in the heavens without fear,

the Allies from the Western World.

They quickly unburdened their gigantic sacks,

and destroyed a bridge in southern Iraq.

They killed the people fleeing from al-Nasiriyeh.

It was Jesus who recognised Adhmed Kassim,

the boy with the loaves,

lying on a stretcher,

still wearing the red cardigan his mother had knit for him

so skilfully without a seam,

his head crowned with shrapnel thorns,

holes in his feet, a wound in his side.

He was only ten years of age.

Jesus learned his second lesson.

That is a translation of a poem in Irish I published in
An tUltach.
If you think it isn't good I can say it suffered in translation!

Propaganda called the Gulf War a clean war, a surgical operation, but here was killing comparable to Hiroshima and Dresden, a re-enactment of ‘Bomber' Harris' aerial murder raid on Lubeck on 28 March 1942. Abrams tanks of the 1st Mechanised Infantry Division equipped with bulldozer blades drove parallel to Iraqi trenches and buried soldiers alive. The Basra road carnage of fleeing helpless soldiers reminded one of the worst features of the First World War. The systematic destruction of the civil infrastructure of Iraq has led to the ill-health of millions of people and a high infant mortality. The allies sought to destroy
en masse
the Iraqi forces in Kuwait and south-eastern Iraq. These were mainly peasant conscripts and reservists. Their surrender would have been a matter of course but the allies chose to treat them as ‘target rich'. Thousands of fuel-air explosives and slurry bombs and cluster bombs which spill out hundreds of grenades, and missiles from the Multiple Rocket Launch System (MRLS) poured down on the unfortunates. There is little sympathy in western Europe and in the United States of America for the victims. Governments of western Europe and the USA deliberately deny their peoples access to the culture of the Arabs. Pope John Paul stood almost isolated in his condemnation of the Gulf War. The disciples of the Lord fled as at Gethsemane.

I welcome my inheritance of western culture. I hope I am positive about accepting the benefits of modern technology. I do not, however, accept as utopia the ideology of secular liberalism, pluralism or a ‘democracy' based on capitalism. The Brandt report, which exposes the north-south divide of the earth, is too much a reproach for that. History repeats itself. Empires rise and fall. Each great new power regards itself as ‘civilisation' and frowns on the rest of the world as ‘barbarism'. New Caesars need not lop off the enemy tribe's right hands. They can bury them alive in trenches. The Rockeye II, weighing about 500lbs, dispenses 247 grenade-sized bomblets which produce a hail of around half a million anti-personnel shrapnel fragments which can kill or severely wound anyone within an acre. All that is needed is a target-rich area of human beings.

I believe there is a utopia or a parousia – the redemption of Jesus Christ. That demands moving into the world of spirit. Redemption like creation is an ongoing thing. People in every age are heroic in their suffering, sacrifice and generosity. Jesus is eternally alive and he learns from every age of humanity. The boy with the loaves in the desert and Adhmed Kassim are telescoped.

I do not find the Northern Ireland problem difficult to understand. It is in microcosm the problem of many countries and states in the world. The division of rich and poor is the basis of the division in Northern Ireland. Discrimination against Catholics was administrative policy of the Stormont government for fifty years. Its rule lacked charity and justice. In that sense the war in the north is a religious war. The facts of this injustice were admitted publicly by the British government in the Cameron Report on Disturbances in Northern Ireland of 1969. Justice in the work places is still being pursued by the Fair Employment Agency in Northern Ireland and by Irish people armed with the McBride Principles who lobby institutions of power in the USA. Sharing, power-sharing, is an answer to the Northern Ireland problem. The British government has further aggravated the dominance of one community and culture over the other by the one-sided structuring of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Ulster Defence Regiment which places security and power solely in the hands of unionists. This serious mistake has led to corruption of law, harassment, state killings and collusion of government forces with loyalist paramilitaries.