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[casi] Letter from Adolfo PÚrez Esquivel!




Dear List,

This an open letter from PÚrez Esquivel to
President Bush. I am posting it first of all in
solidarity with Ghazwan's letter to AI, HRW, and
ACLU. I am glad Ghazwan won't give the occupiers
an inch. And I think we should all write letters
to AI, et al - in protest to what is happening in
Iraq.

I am also posting PÚrez Esquivel's letter for all
of you. It is a letter that makes it possible to
believe that in the end the "God of Life" will
prevail, as impossible as it may seem at the moment.

Esquivel's letter is a strong denunciation of Bush
and his allied cohorts, but it is neither bitter
nor angry. He is just telling Bush how he feels.
There is great strength and serenity in Esquivel.
It has helped me and I hope it will help you.

PÚrez Esquivel was born in Argentina in 1931. He
trained as an architect and sculptor. In 1974 he
gave up this is teaching post and devoted all his
time and energy to peace and human rights work. His
organization is called Servicio Paz y Justicia. In
1976 he started an international campaign to persuade
the UN to establish a Human Rights Commission. In
1980 he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

In his acceptance speech, PÚrez Esquivel said:

"We live in hope because, like St. Paul, we believe
that love never dies. Human beings in the historical
process have created enclaves of love with their active
practice of solidarity throughout the world, with the
goal of the full liberation of humanity."
....

"To create this new society we must reach out our
hands, fraternally, without hatred and rancour, for
reconciliation and peace, with unfaltering determination
in the defense of truth and justice.

"We know we cannot plant seeds with closed fists. To
sow we must open our hands."

--Elga


<Fwd>
http://www.counterpunch.com/esquivel04302003.html


April 30, 2003

"You Talk of Freedom; You Detest Freedom"

A Letter to President Bush

By ADOLFO PEREZ ESQUIVEL

I don't know if you will read this letter, not because
it will not reach you, but because you are incapable of
reading it. Your heart is so hardened by hatred and
fear, that you have neither capacity nor courage to open
your mind and your spirit to compassion. In spite of all
that, however, I cannot keep from sending it to you,
because if you do not read it, I am sure it will be read
by many men and women, those who ask you to stop the
massacre of the people of Iraq. When you decided to
invade Iraq, in spite of the opposition of the people of
the world, you did not listen to their cries, "NO TO
WAR, YES TO PEACE;" you closed your ears and your heart
when the United Nations, churches, humanitarian and
human rights organizations demanded that the rule of law
and the consideration of the people had to prevail. You
were not interested in hearing it.

I asked you in another letter do not defy God, do not
built the Tower of Babel out of pitilessness and hate;
do not let yourself be ruled by your own ambitions of
power to impose your political, economic and military
interests. I asked you to think, because you reap what
you sow. Sadly, you do not know how to honor life; you
have profoundly damaged humanity as a whole and your own
Northamerican people.

You will win wars with your imperial army and with that
of your allies; you will be able to show the great power
of your weapons and the high technology of death; but
none of that justifies you. The greatest of your defeats
is that you have lost the respect of the people of the
world, and, for all the crimes committed, you have
earned the rejection of the conscience of humanity. In
this flight from decency you are joined by your deadly
allies: Tony Blair, JosÚ MarÝa Aznar and Australia.

You hide the true motives of the invasion of Iraq and
seek to justify the massacres to take over that
country's oil resources, and dominate the Middle East to
impose your plans of world hegemony and of globalized
dictatorship. You have turned the EE.UU. into a
terrorist State. Did you need to massacre the people of
Iraq, to kill children and women to get rid of a
dictator who used to be your ally?

We need to remember, not to remain in the past; but
because it must illuminate our present. The long history
of invasions confirms it: Vietnam, Cambodia, Yugoslavia,
Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and
the military dictatorships the EE.UU. imposed; the
present militarization and military bases all over Latin
America and in other parts of the world. You can
dominate militarily; but you will never be able to
convince anyone.

The people are not taken in by the lies and
disinformation campaigns the accomplice mass media of
communications uses as psychological weapon, showing
Northamerican and British soldiers in charitable acts,
giving away candy to Iraqi children, after having
massacred their families and bombarded the population.
How will you try to justify your crimes, those you call,
"collateral damages"? How will you explain to the world
that you want to destroy the United Nations and refuse
to acknowledge international law, seeking to apply your
policies of domination, without concern for human
suffering or for the destruction of other countries,
using State terrorism?

How to justify the unjustifiable? Can you sleep without
being punished by your own conscience? Your army bombs
cities and civilian populations with thousands of
missiles; it fires against populations yellow "cluster
bombs" and boxes of food color yellow also; aberrant
method used in Vietnam, Cambodia and in the Gulf War.
Bombs and food are your "medicines of death." Your
generals say that they don't count corpses; they only
count the bombs that produce the corpses.

Perversion has no boundaries; but you say to pray to God
and you believe you are predestined for humanity. Hitler
had the same thoughts when he unleashed his madness and
wanted to dominate the world. The God of Life will call
you on account for your own crimes. You are guilty of
crimes against humanity and you will be judged for the
many deaths and suffering against the people of Iraq and
other peoples of the world.

The world sees with horror that you are parceling up and
giving away that which not yours, that the vultures that
surround you are ready to throw themselves over the
carcasses and the blood of the Iraqi people, to make
lucrative business with the oil. They talk of the
"reconstruction of Iraq," colonized and subjected to the
interests of the EE.UU. and think of the profits they
will make.

You talk of God. And you detest God. You talk of freedom
and you destroy freedom. You talk of democracy and
dignity, and you do not hesitate in sacrificing them in
the altar of the god, Molok, your god of destruction and
death. You talk of human rights and you violate them
systematically.

The United Nations are an obstacle to your interests. Or
they subordinate themselves to your will, or you destroy
them. You pretend to create a tribunal to judge your ex
ally, Saddam Hussein, because he is no longer useful to
you; but you do not recognize the International Criminal
Court to judge the crimes against humanity. You want to
get impunity for the crimes of your soldiers and your
own impunity. Do not defy God and the peoples of the
world. Empires fall, no matter how powerful they are.

You could have planted Peace and Solidarity; but you
didn't do it. You could have generated programs for the
life and development of the people, and you didn't do
it. You elected to follow the worst of the paths. Who
will be your next victims?

I cannot give you my greetings of Peace and Good Will,
because you do not believe in Peace and you do not
practice The Good. But I can tell you repent from your
crimes and start to mend the Evil that you do.


Adolfo PÚrez Esquivel is an Argentinian peace activist
and scholar. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980.
<End>






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