NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/bit/listserv/disarml/473

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From:   IN%"[e-mail]"  "Quaker concerns related to peace and soci
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Subj:   Opting for Nonviolence in the Balk

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/* Written  9:13 pm  Dec  3, 1992 by [e-mail] in igc:gn.peacemedia
 */
/* ---------- "Opting for Nonviolence in the Balk" ---------- */
OPTING FOR NONVIOLENCE IN THE BALKANS:
AN INTERVIEW WITH ITALY'S BISHOP BELLO

[Peace Media Service]

Bishop Tonino Bello, President of Pax Christi-Italy, 57 years old,
is president of the Italian section of Pax Christi International,
a group he regards as ``the peace corps of the Catholic Church.''
In an interview published in the November 1992 Pax Christi
International's _Newsletter_, he opposed military solutions to the
crisis in former-Yugoslavia.

Q: Do you think that a military intervention is necessary? Even
the Pope implied the need for an intervention when he referred to
the nations' duty to interfere.

A: No. The Pope has not called for an armed intervention. He has
asked that the hand of the aggressor should be stopped, but not
with the force of weapons. The ``just war'' is a fantasy of the
past, which this same Pope has helped to do away with.

Q: How, then, can the hand of the aggressor be stopped?

A: The aggressors who should have been stopped were the political,
economic and military elites who kindled the fire of nationalism
and ethnic hatred so as to redefine their positions of power.
Pacifists asked for respect of human rights, for protection of
minorities, for nonviolent autonomy processes. Who listened to
them? Now anyone opposing armed intervention is ridiculed. Even in
the face of ridicule we say war is not justified, not even as
``ultima ratio.''

Q: The Pope seemed to take a stronger stand against violence
during the Gulf crisis. Why?

A: I repeat that this allegation that the Pope favors use of
violent means is false. In the Gulf War he was outraged at the
self interest of the powerful, anxious to break off diplomatic and
political negotiations to allow the military option. In the case
of the war in the Balkans, however, the Pope sees that no one is
doing anything apparently because the Balkans are not worth the
effort. This is something different from a legitimation of war. In
the Pope's initiative, there is the prophet's protest.

Q: But why, in the pronouncements of John Paul II, are the
aggressors always the Serbs and the attacked the Catholic Croats,
together with the Moslems?

A: Outrages are being committed on both sides, even if the
responsibilities may differ. And the Pope has never defended one
party. The Serbs, the Moslems and the Orthodox who are being
killed also belong to his universal mission.

Q: Why is it that the voice of the pacifists, of the absolute
supporters of nonviolence, seems to have become so weak nowadays?

A: A higher or a lower sound volume does not depend on the person
speaking but on the person handling the amplifier. During the Gulf
the mass media found it opportune to amplify the voices of  the
pacifists. This year those same voices have deliberately been
muted.

Q: As president of Pax Christi-Italy, what first step would you
like to see to stop the massacres in Bosnia?

A: The military option deserves our greatest mistrust. Rather one
should opt for the strategy of nonviolence. The problem of the
Balkans cannot be put only in terms of a cease-fire. This will
have to be followed by a reconstruction of the social structure: a
social link not founded on religious or ethnic hatred.

Q: Who will take on this? An army? But if the army were that of
the UN?

A: Let us rather give the UN an unarmed contingent of
conscientious objectors. If the UN could send 500,000
conscientious objectors, parliamentarians, ministers, as a human
buffer to the border areas, not only in Bosnia, then a great force
of peace would invade the war zones.

[Pax Christi International: Oude Graanmarkt 21, 1000 Brussels
Belgium; +32.2: 502.55.50; fax [phone]]