Letter from the Coordinator 2007-10-01

As I write, the world’s attention has been riveted on Asia where there has been in the past weeks a dramatic resurgence of social upheavals and popular uprising. In Pakistan, protests are mounting against military strongman President Musharraf’s bid to seek reelection despite increasingly strident demands that he step down from power.

And in Burma, tens of thousands of awe-inspiring Buddhist monks have spilled into the streets, galvanizing popular opposition to a repressive and brutal military dictatorship that has terrorized the Burmese for the past 45 years. Heavily armed troops have been ordered by the ruling military junta to clear the streets and crush the non-violent popular revolt, raising fears of a repeat of the horrendous massacre of 3,000 people in a student-led protest movement that challenged military rule in 1988. Of late hundreds have been arrested and a still-undetermined number of demonstrators (16 by some count), including monks and a Japanese photojournalist, have been killed when soldiers opened fire on the protesters.

A pall of despair has now descended on Burma, making it incumbent on the international community to take decisive moves to break the impasse and help empower the Burmese people reclaim their right to resistance and to chart their own destiny. Religious communities the world over are specially challenged to act in solidarity with the Buddhist monks who have valiantly stood up for their long-suffering people in defiance of the much-feared military junta. Yet nobody in his/her right mind was cheering when Macapagal-Arroyo, her own regime widely condemned for rampant extra-judicial killings and forced abductions, spoke at the UN General Assembly recently, demanding that Burma “return to the path of democracy and to release Daw Aung San Suu Kyi—now.”

Hong Kong Rally after Peace Charter Meeting

Early July found me still in Hong Kong just after the conclusion of a small workshop in late June to review the first draft of the People’s Charter on Peace for Life. The initial draft prepared by Continuation Committee (CC) member Ninan Koshy has since been edited and refined for circulation to interested parties, many of whom have been invited by PfL Co-Moderator Kim Yong-Bock to a second workshop on the charter to be held later this month also in Hwacheon, South Korea. The next Hwacheon meeting is expected to finalize the draft and draw up plans for follow-up action.

After our peace charter meeting, I had the rare opportunity of marching with hundreds of Filipino migrant workers in Hong Kong who were protesting the reduction of their wages, along with tens of thousands of local demonstrators who filled the streets of this bustling city—shouting slogans and bearing placards protesting one issue or the other—to mark the July 1st anniversary of the British handover of HK to China.

Summer Interfaith Institute

August was a an exceptionally activity-filled month, with a number of Peace for Life network leaders and participants congregating in Vancouver for the 2007 Summer Interfaith Institute for Justice, Peace and Social Movements. Organized by Denise Nadeau, the Institute’s interim director and PfL network participant, at the splendid hill-top campus of the Simon Fraser University, the Institute was a highly innovative interfaith activity seeking to address the critical issues of our times.

PfL was given major space, a starring role if you will, during the Institute’s opening ceremony on August 5 which featured an all-PfL panel on the theme, “Is There Life After Tea? Moving from Interfaith Dialogue to Solidarity in Times of Empire”. Panelists were PfL Working Group (WG) members: Harvard Divinity School Bloomberg Professor Farid Esack, California State University Assistant Professor Kathryn Poethig, and myself. Moderating the panel was another WG member Namsoon Kang, who is now Associate Professor at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University. As the first speaker on the panel, I had occasion to introduce PfL and its perspectives on the theme. I also stressed that the only way to make sense of the current world disorder is to view it from the empire lens. That is, empire provides an overarching framework through which seemingly unconnected events or disjointed realities, like globalization and the war on terror, are better apprehended. I then renewed the challenge that, with the world afflicted by the twin evils of terrorism (including state terrorism and neo-liberal terrorism) and fundamentalism (including Christian fundamentalism and market fundamentalism), we are called to reclaim religious space for radical transformative action.

Running from August 4-12, the Institute showcased an interesting mix of reflection/meditation sessions and workshops on relevant topics ranging from Spiritual Practice for Peace and Justice and Hip-Hop for Social Justice. Specially thought-provoking and very much in tune with the call for faith-based counter-imperial resistance, in the context of the rise of religion as a major ideological force, were excellent course offerings superbly led by Farid and Namsoon, respectively, on “The War on Muslim Minds: A Progresssive Islamic Response” and “Fundamentalism in World Religions”. I also found very useful for our preparations for the Palestine mission the course led by Jewish scholar/activist Simona Sharoni on the subject, “The Israel/Palestine Conflict: Difficult Conversations Across Significant Differences”. But also inspiring was the powerful testimony given by Canadian James Loney, who was held hostage by Iraqi militants in a tragic episode that led to the death of an American member of his group, the Christian Peacemakers Team. During the Institute I also had the pleasure of getting acquainted with three prospective participants in our upcoming peace and solidarity mission to Palestine-Israel in November this year: Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, Priti Shah and Junaid Ahmad.

PfL Meeting in Vancouver and other Solidarity Engagements

While in Vancouver, I took the opportunity of convening an informal dinner-meeting of PfL network participants and WG members who had taken part in the Institute. The dinner at a cozy Nepalese restaurant was generously hosted by long-time PfL partner Andrea Mann of the Anglican Church of Canada. A major proposal emerging from the meeting was to nominate Farid to the post of Co-Moderator (together with Yong-Bock who already had been confirmed as Co-Moderator). It was argued that with Farid as another Co-Moderator, all the three major regions (Latin America/Caribbean, Asia-Pacific and Africa) would be represented in the leadership and the interfaith character of PfL would be significantly enhanced.

I arrived in Vancouver a few days earlier to speak about the workers’ struggle for living wage in the context of globalization in a public forum on August 2 sponsored by the Living Wage Campaign, many members of whom are Filipino health workers who due to privatization of health services now receive poverty wages and thus forced to work three or more shifts a day. I also spoke about the unabated political slayings in the Philippines, along with Kathryn who happens to be an active member of the Philippine solidarity network in the US, at an informal gathering on August 7 of Filipino-Canadian activists connected with the Kalayaan (Freedom) Center and the British Colombia Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines on the invitation of BCCHRP chair, Beth Dollaga. Beth generously hosted me during my first days in Vancouver before the Institute opened.

Second Meeting of the Middle East Subgroup in New York

After Vancouver I headed for New York where we had a very fruitful meeting on August 14 of the Middle East Subgroup, tasked with planning for the Palestine mission, at the WCC-UN advocacy office just across the UN headquarters. Present were Gabriel Habib who traveled from Washington, Chris Ferguson who offered his office as venue, and David who hosted our first meeting in April also in NY. Farid conveyed his regrets as he had planned to fly to South Africa after the Summer Interfaith Institute. The meeting centered on urgent business with regards to the Palestine mission, including a review of participants’ list, finances, and the proposed program both in Palestine and Jordan. It helped that already available for discussion was the draft itinerary of the visits and meetings in Palestine prepared by the local organizing committee, led by Nidal Abusuhuf. A few changes and other recommendations on the draft were proposed at the meeting which have since been forwarded to the local partners in Palestine. Taking into account the feedbacks of the subgroup, the local committee in Palestine has just recently produced a revised draft of what promises to be an extremely exciting and educational visit to Palestine-Israel.

To date at least 30 participants have more or less confirmed their participation. In addition, a United Church of Canada team having a two-week exposure program in Palestine, led by PfL partner Desmond Jagger-Parsons, is expected to join our Palestine phase of the program. I am pleased to report that while women and specially youth are unfortunately under-represented, a good third of the delegation are Muslims, Jews and Hindus, making this the first really interfaith activity of PFL. Also around half of the mission participants, including those from the South, have undertaken to cover their travel, enabling us to subsidize the travel cost of a larger number of participants from the South. We are however still struggling with the budget, given that local hosting expenses have been much higher than anticipated.

We have in the meantime already issued to prospective participants, as part of their preparation for mission, the first two volumes of the Palestine Reader. Said PfL resource book has been produced by CC member Ranjan Solomon who heads a Goa-based research consultancy group, Alternatives.

School for Ecumenical Leadership Formation in Colombo

Soon after I returned to Manila I traveled briefly to Colombo on September 5-8 where I gave a power-point presentation on the “Geopolitical Reality in Asia in the Context of Empire” to some forty (40) Christian youth and students who came from different parts of Asia-Pacific for the three-week School for Ecumenical Leadership Formation (SELF). Co-organized by the World Student Christian Federation Asia-Pacific and the Christian Conference of Asia, this year’s SELF had for its theme “Young People Working Towards Wider Ecumenism in a Pluralistic Society”.

I was more than happy to serve as resource person for said training program since as a former CCA youth secretary, youth leadership formation has been one of my main passions and since, as a former Political Science academic, geopolitics has been among my major areas of interest. WSCF-AP general secretary and CC member Necta Roca-Montes was the main organizer of the training program. While in Colombo I had the opportunity to meet with Fr. Jayasiri Pieris, NCC Sril Lanka general secretary and part of the November delegation to Palestine-Israel, as well as long-time colleague in the ecumenical movement, Marshall Fernando, who is the director of the Ecumenical Institute in Colombo where SELF was held.

Local PfL Engagements

In July, the secretariat took advantage of the visit to the Philippines of CC and Middle East subgroup member David Wildman, who has been active in the US solidarity movement for Palestine, to hold PFL’s second forum in Manila on Palestine on July 14 at the Philippine Normal University. The first was convened the previous month under the co-sponsorship of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines in response to the call of the World Council of Churches for an International Church Action on Peace for Palestine-Israel or IAPPI. The July forum helped raise students’ awareness of international issues and resulted in the formation of a local multi-faith initiative that has committed itself to strategic engagement on Palestine-Israeli issues.

As part of the activities marking the September 11 terrorist assault in New York, in the wake of which Bush launched the US war on terror, PfL joined other church-based groups in Manila led by the Ecumenical Voice for Peace and Human Rights in the Philippines in organizing a public forum on the theme, “Terror on the Rise? Human Rights, Peace and Security 6 Years after 9-11”. Among the speakers were PfL secretariat member Vivian de Lima, who gave an overview of the global situation, and NCCP general secretary and CC member Sharon Rose Joy Ruiz-Duremdes, who gave the synthesis.

Conclusion

In closing let me just extend once again PfL’s sincerest condolences to CC member Gregor Henderson, president of the Uniting Church of Australia, for the untimely passing of his beloved wife, Alison, a few months ago.

And thank you, dear readers, for your indulgence.

In solidarity,

Carmencita

CARMENCITA P. KARAGDAG

Coordinator

Peace for Life