Tuesday, October 27, 2009

THE GARDEN OF THE RIGHTEOUS IN PADOVA/1

by David Monticelli
President Peace Culture!
















(English translation by Michela Moroni)

Dear friends,

last Sunday, October the 18th, myself, on behalf of the Association Peace Culture!, and Françoise Kankindi and Eric Wibabara (with their little son Alain) for the association Bene-Rwanda, we had the chance to participate to a very important and touching event, organized by the Garden of the Righteous Worldwide in Padua, a park created in 2008 in Padua, to honor people - the "Righteous" - who opposed themselves to genocides. (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardino_dei_Giusti_del_Mondo)
Among the Righteous who received the prize this year, there was Zura Karuhimbi (our candidate to the Peace Nobel Prize 2010, together with Yolande Mukagasana and Pierantonio Costa) and Jacqueline Mukansonera, the woman who saved Yolande during the genocide in 1994. It was this year the second edition.
Since Saturday afternoon, we've been hosted by Prof. Giuliano Pisani, responsible of the municipality of Padua for the Garden of the Righteous, who started thinking, in November 1999, that the Garden of the Righteous in Padua could become a reality and who saw his dream come true, 9 years later. Prof. Pisani put everyone at ease, with his warm welcome.
On Saturday evening, we had dinner at Pontecorvo Restaurant: along the big table were sitting many personalities (or their relatives) you can find in books of history, such as Misha Wagner, son of Armin Wagner, the German Righteous who denounced, by his photos, the genocide of Armenians at the beginning of the century; Gunter Burger, councellor for Foreign Affairs in Fribourg, Germany, who was there to receive the prize on behalf of the Righteous Gertrud Luckner, who helped many Jews to leave Germany during Nazism...
(to be continued in the next episode)
















Sunday, October 18, 2009

ZURA'S JOURNEY TO ITALY

Zura Karuhimbi is in Rome where she met Francoise Kankindi, president of Bene Rwanda (together in the picture).


Zura will spend the next few days in Padova where she will be awarded in the Garden of Righteous of Padova.
She will meet there Yolande Mukagasana.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

WORK IN PROGRESS

by David Monticelli
President Peace Culture!

So I ought to you all a first comment about these recent weekend when, first in Urbino and then in Rome, I partecipated to a couple of events in which the protagonist - as for our campaign for Rwanda - was peace, (in other latitudes of this same planet and with other protagonists of this same mankind).
In Urbino on the 3-4 october weekend the conference entitled "By the side of the impossibile" has seen the partecipation of our friend Lance Henson, Cheyenne poet and human rights activist, of Kendall Black Elk, Crow dancer, of Tlahkuilo Arreola Zuniga, Yaqui and Aztec artist, of Prof. Luigi Alfieri lecturer at the Urbino University and finally of the undersigned. We talked of the philosophy, but mostly of the political activism, the claims and the tragic contemporary situations of the so-called indigenous (or native) peoples of the world, minorities more and more risking further phisical and cultural genocides by that exploitation and oppression machine that is the current global economical and political system.
In Rome, at the "Town of the Other Economy" in the Testaccio's district, on the 10-11 october weekend an event called "Native Events" took place. The partecipants were our Francoise Kankindi, president of Bene-Rwanda association, Tlahkuilo Arreola Zuniga, Apirana Taylor, Maori artist and civil rights activist for his people, Francisco Vera Millaquen, spokesman of the indios Mapuche community of Chile, Kevin Annett, former Reverend of the United Canadian Church who denounced the genocide of the native american children in the infamous boarding schools of Canada (also called residential schools).
The official aim of the event (come to its second edition after the Genoa's one, last year) is to ask the institution of the "Remembrance Day of the Genocide of Native Peoples" and to ask to the Italian State the ratification of the ILO 169 Convention about the indigenous and tribal peoples rights, adopted on 1989 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), an agency of the United Nations, (see http://www.survivalinternational.org/material/431).
This Convention recognize to the indigenous peoples a set of fundamental rights, essential to their survival, including rights on the ancestral lands and the right to decide independently about their future. Currently, the Convention is the only international legislative tool to protect the indigenous peoples' rights. By its ratification, the states commit themselves to effectively guarantee the physical and spiritual integrity of the indigenous peoples and to fight any form of discrimination against them.
On Saturday conferences about these peoples genocide took place, and in the afternoon we saw the poignant Kevin Annett's documentary "Unerpentant: the Canada's genocide", that you can see in full at the following website: http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/ (prepare yourself and hold tight).> In the evening, at the "Teatro Valle" in the historic centre of Rome, a joint performance of Tlahkuilo Arreola Zuniga and Apirana Taylor translated these topics in artistic representations by dances, music, painting and poetry with the voices of five italian theatre actors who partecipated to the performance. Most of the second part was dedicated to the rwandese genocide.
On Sunday morning it was the turn of the moving testimony of Francisco Vera Millaquen about the recent escalation of violence and repression against the Mapuche people of Chile (despite the democrat proclamations of the socialist government) and the one of our Francoise about Rwanda. Their words touched everybody in the deep of the heart.
From this double weekend, (which will become triple, since next Saturday and Sunday 17-18 October Zura Kurahimbi and Jaqueline Mukansonera will be awarded by the City of Padua with the "Garden of the rightenouses of the world" prize, (http://www.padovanet.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=13091), is coming out clearly the universal and the "transversal" perspective to which our activism for peace must necessarily refer. Only in the spirit of being part of a movement wide as the whole humanity oppressed, exploited and victim of the genocides, (and in the conscious recognition of this membership), our Nobel campaign for Rwanda will find out the strenght and the right energy, as our native friends would say, to be accomplished.

2010 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE TO RWANDA'S RIGHTEOUS

Dear all,

This is an invitation to join and support the 2010 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE TO RWANDA'S RIGHTEOUS.In 1994, genocide took place against the Tutsis in Rwanda. While so many "obeyed to orders" and took part in the killings, some disobeyed and saved lives. Amongst them, we remember Captain Mbaye Diagne of Senegal, who saved hundreds of lives and was killed at a roadblock; Marc Vaiter of France, who refused to be evacuated and protected orphans, then died in 1995; an Italian volunteer Antonia Locatelli, who was killed in 1992 as she spoke out to denounce the organization of the genocide. But some are still alive: Zura Karuhimbi, an old Hutu lady who is today 84 and saved over 100 people in 1994; the Italian consul Pierantonio Costa, who evacuated the foreigners then came back to Rwanda to save over 2.000 lives; and Yolande Mukagasana, whose family was slaughtered, and who was saved by, and then saved, the Hutu lady Jacqueline Mukansonera, and then dedicated her life to upholding the memory of the genocide. We are setting up a group of volunteers to support the candidacy of Zura Karuhimbi, Pierantonio Costa and Yolande Mukagasana to the 2010 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE TO RWANDA'S RIGHTEOUS. The meaning of this initiative is to "give peace a chance" by showing that all of us have a choice, as even in the event of a genocide, every human being can choose to save and not to kill. We wish to oppose the "banality of good" to the "banality of evil". This must be proclaimed at the global level. Also, we wish that universal recognition be given once and for all to the genocide that took place in Rwanda, against genocide denial, revisionism and justification.