Against the crime of silence

Martí Olivella

History will judge us by our silence, our complicity because despite the distraction, manipulation and concealment of information that we suffer, we have a broad enough knowledge to no longer permit to do, to not continue keeping silent, to not continue working with a structurally unjust and unsustainable global system, with a system that generates and maintains a source of power conflicts.

We have been more than six decades of American PAX founded on the ashes of war. A PAX maintaining an economic mess (Bretton Woods) for the richest countries and people: a PAX maintaining political disorder (Security Council controlled by the nuclear powers), a disorder that keeps PAX armed (on behalf of the fight against terrorism), a PAX causing a financial mess (imposing the Washington Consensus for the accumulation of the rich and against the majority of the population), a PAX that keeps the armed occupation and Apartheid in Palestine and many other places.

We do not want this PAX. We want a peace based on equality of everyone and all peoples. And to achieve that, we want to build peace with nonviolent means starting from the search truth force: satyagraha.

No silence means to tell the hidden truth about the most serious conflicts. Today we know, documented, that the Palestinian people live under an Apartheid regime, and as in the case of South Africa, we must demand our governments the arms embargo against the State of Israel, ie, end all relationship purchase or sale of weapons, military equipment or allow investigations to continue a policy of genocide and contrary to Human Rights.

Today we know, documented that the Spanish Government authorizes the sale of arms to Israel, and above all, that many companies buy and finance arms to Israel, and we know that the Government has signed military cooperation agreements with Israel. The Government should stop these illegal relationships that go against the Code of Ethics of the European Union regarding arms trade with countries that do not respect human rights or that used against the population.

Today we know that the Russell Tribunal on Palestine held in Barcelona urges the EU and each and every one of its member states to impose the necessary sanctions to his partner, Israel, through diplomatic, commercial and cultural relations with a view to ending impunity from which Israel benefits since decades. In case that the EU lacks the courage for that, the Tribunal has the European citizens to exert the necessary pressure by all appropriate means.

As governments do not undertake these sanctions, we, citizens, are who have to undertake them with appropriate means: to support popular movements and nonviolent resistance fighting against the wall and occupation in Palestine, taking part in the Platform Amb Palestine Al Cor making known the boats Free Gaza and the March for Freedom of Gaza, co-hosting the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, issuing reports on Apartheid against the Palestinian people or on military relations between Spain and Israel.

No silence also means building the truth about the reasons and beneficiaries of the global crisis on the destructive effects of Washington Consensus against the population (1,000 million hungry people) against the real economy (98% of financial resources devoted to speculation), against the environment (waste oil and the dramatic increase in climate change) and against the financial complex (media, military and industrial) that rules the world because it causes crisis instead of avoiding it, imposes measures to politicians that benefit them and creates conflicts in order to continue selling weapons against terrorism.

We must combine nonviolent strategies to find intelligent solutions to armed conflicts and nonviolent strategies to build an alternative consensus to the ruling consensus that sustains these conflicts to stay in power.