Refleksi Dies Natalis 1 abad Student Christian Movement of Srilanka (Gerakan Mahasiswa Kristen Srilanka)

So what does peace mean in this savage, corporatized, militarized world? What does it mean in a world where a entrenched system of appropriation has created a situation in which poor countries, which have been plundered by colonizing regimes for centuries, are steeped in debt to the very same countries that plundered them and have repay that debt at the rate of 382 billion dollars a year?

What does peace mean in a world in which the combined wealth of the world’s 587 billionaires exceeds the combined ross domestic product of the world’s poorest countries? Or when rich countries –that pay farm subsidies of a billion dollars a day- try and force poor countries to drop their subsidies?

What does peace mean to people in occupied Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Tibet, and Chechnya? Or to the Aboriginal people of Australia? Or the origin of Nigeria. Or the Kurds in Turkey? Or the Dalitis and Adivasais of India? What does peace mean to women in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan?

What does it mean to the millions who are beiing unprooted from their lands by dams and development projects? What does peace mean to the poor who are being actively robbed of their resources and for whom everyday life is a grim battle for water, shelter, survival, and, above all, some semblance of dignity?

FOR THEM PEACE IS WAR.

We know very well who benefits from war in the age of Empire is the Corporate-Military cabel. But we must also ask ourselves honestly who benefits from peace in the age of Empire? War mongering is criminal, but talking of peace without talking of justice could easily become advocacy for a kind of capitalism. And talking of justice without unmasking the institutions and the systems that perpetrate injustice, is beyond hypocritical.

It’s easy to blame the poor for being poor. It’s easy to believe that the world is being caught up in an escalating spiral of terrorism and war. That’s what allows the American President to say: “You’re either with us or with the terrorists.” But know that terrorism is only the privatization of war. That terrorists are the free marketers of war. They believe that the legitmateuse of violence is not the sole prerogative of the state.

It’s mendacious to make moral distinctions between the unspeakable brutality of terrorism and the indiscriminate carnage of war and occupation. Both kinds of violence are unacceptable. We cannot support one and condemn the other.

The real tragedy is that most people in the world are trapped between the horror of a punitive peace and the terror of war. Those are the two sheer cliffs w’re hemmed in by. The question is: How do we climb out of this crevasse?

bersama teman2 Student Christian Movement se-Asia Pasifik