FOR ABHORS HOSTAGE VIOLENCEThe Fellowship of Reconciliation condemns the taking of hostages in a school in Beslan, Russia, and mourns the unspeakable tragedy that followed. The FOR also condemns the killing of other innocents in recent weeks: the death of 16 Israelis in a suicide bomb attack on a bus in Beersheva; the downing of two Russian passenger airliners; the suicide bombing that killed 10 outside a Moscow subway station, and this week's car bombing in Jakarta, Indonesia. The seizing of hostages is always a violent and abhorrent act, but the deliberate targeting of the school in Beslan, where a large number of children would inevitably become casualties, represents a disregard for the most innocent that is not often reached, even by the most notorious hostage takers. In keeping with its principles of nonviolence, FOR believes that all killing for political ends is always wrong. Yet there seems to be an added degree of evil when the violence is carried out not against occupation forces or an oppressive government, but against innocent men, women and children going about their daily lives. That kind of violence, which makes surrogate targets of ordinary people, deserves a special place in the annals of humankind's capacity for inhumanity to its own. Not only is political violence immoral, but it is also the least likely method to gain sympathy for a cause and the least likely to achieve enduring success. By resorting to terror tactics, militants who have legitimate grievances undermine the claim they might otherwise have to the high moral ground. They discredit their cause in the international community and when equally violent countermeasures are taken against them, those measures seem to many to be justified. Political violence rarely succeeds in bringing about long-term peace. It almost never accomplishes its goal of permanently cowing the opposition into submission. Nonviolent methods, on the other hand, helped bring liberation to a significant part of the world (India, South Africa, Communist Eastern Europe, Brazil and Chile) and remain the enduring symbol of struggles such as the civil rights movement. While condemning the political violence of the last few weeks, FOR is also concerned and disheartened by the response of governments. By committing his country to the policy of preemptive military action, President Putin joins George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon in a questionable triumvirate of leaders who use acts of terror and violence to justify pre-emptive attacks against anyone they deem evil. If violence by militants doesn't accomplish results, then retaliatory violence by states doesn't provide solutions. It merely ratchets up the hatred and deepens the problem. Has Sharon's or Bush's "bring 'em on" attitude reduced acts of terror by militants, or has it deepened and extended their appeal? Terror is terror, whether it is carried out by militants and fanatics, or by the forces of the State. And violence is violence, regardless of whether it is hatched in secret hideouts or in the hallways of power. The world cannot live by a doctrine that says their violence against us means we must fight back harder with our own violence, and our violence against them will make them stop theirs. The FOR believes there IS another way. It is to confront injustice and oppression with the many tools of active nonviolence, in the way of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. The choice is not between justified or unjustified violence, or even between violence and nonviolence. It is, as Martin Luther King said, a choice between nonviolence and nonexistence. September 8, 2004 Contact: Jennifer Hyman, Communications Coordinator, 845.358-4601 |