No nukes! Women’s Forum

Hiroshima, August 2008

Christina RAPHAËL,

Le Mouvement de la Paix, France

Dear peaceful friends,

My speech will be brief. However, I just wanted to share my thoughts of mere mortal that I am, on life of human beings, especially on woman and in a universal way.

In my country, in each village, there is a war memorial. Every time I go round France, I go and meditate at them. Every time, emotion assails me. Dozens and dozens of “dead people for the grateful motherland”: how dare we use the word “mother”? Does a mother send her children to death? When several names of a same family are engraved on a same stele, my thought concurs with these mothers who have given birth – like a sacrifice to come – for interests which didn’t concern them. An infanticide motherland, criminal isn’t it? Better still, mothers of servicemen, non-commissioned officer or not, proudly wear mourning for their progeny. “It was his/her destiny”, “God wanted that”. It’s meekly accepted. No anger! No rebellion!

I can’t understand.

Moreover, the “servicemen setting off without a care in the world” propaganda is very old. Well done dear weapons salesmen! You have always managed to doing believe us that your interests are ours!

Thanks to life for not being born during a period of obligation to see my husband, my sons and my brothers going off to the front. What would I have done? What could I have done? How brave would I have been to endure the death of my children? Would I have I put up with it? Would I have been brave enough to give birth again? Many mothers lost her children during the First World War and often conceived sons for the Second one… who didn’t come back. Fathers and mothers are equal in suffering. How to not fall into madness?

Some people tell me: “but who would have protected us against the aggressor?” I can only answer them: “If no human beings were soldiers, who will make war?” This is my only answer.

War is just a trade.

Soldiers and officers of the First World War stroke up a friendship with “enemy” in trench. Almost everybody was shot for high treason!

What dangerous Peace is for potentates of armament!

The conclusion is obvious, peoples can live together serenely.

Interest of armament industry is to oppose peoples. Thousands of bombs dropped during the First World War prove that war was commercially and internationally planned by protagonists themselves about ten years before beginning.

What give us the right to go on war? Who are you dear gentlemen to decide fate of millions of human beings? Are you bloodthirsty? No, not even cruel! You are just greedy and hungry for powers and all in every field. The word “life” has a meaning only for your own. Then, after plundering Africa, you get ready for the feast that leads up to the sharing of “oriental spoils”. On which planet are you living? Do you think you are immortal? I just wish you the diabolical life that you inflict on all victims for your only benefit.

If the tears of suffering that have been shed because of you were collected, we would be swallowed up. If the blood that has been shed because of you was collected, the Blue Planet would be the blood-red one. For Heaven’s sake, when will you be part of the human race? Some prophets, religious or not, have shown us the way by losing their life. How hard it seems to keep going on that way.

I sing for a choir in Aubagne (a small Provencal village, near Marseille). There is an important military base of the Foreign Legion there. After several meetings and good turns, it has been decided to gather our chorus and to hold eight performances all together. It was biased towards the Army. The concerts were wonderful, and the meeting was constructive. These young legionnaires, Serbian, Croatian, Chechen, Russian (first prize-winner at the Moscow Conservatoire), Afghan, Swiss, Algerian, Chinese, Vietnamese and Senegalese gathered around us by music, are truly friends with each other.

What nice conclusion could we draw???

There are several reasons for their enlistment in the Foreign Legion. I only know those who sing with us. Some are orphans; they have lost one or both of their genitors, some are young peoples who have broken off relations with the society…, some fled the poverty of their country, or want to obtain the French nationality…and for a few ones, it’s all about the lure of gain. When I’m watching the DVDs that have been recorded, I have a lump in my throat. These young people are delicate, thoughtful, gentle kind, helpful, and their voices are so beautiful, and together we have sung Christmas Hymns with a lot of emotions.

Some went to Afghanistan. Behind these young people so sensitive, are there individuals able to kill? By which manipulation, which indoctrination, will they be altered?

I asked two of them who were back from Afghanistan: “Do you think that the French Army presence is required?”

- The first one answered “our duty is to obey, when we enlist in the Foreign Legion”.

- The second one answered “I cannot answer to that question, I am a soldier, but wait for me, I am coming back”.

He came back in civilian clothes. “Now I can answer. We have nothing to do there, the Americans deliver weapons to the Afghans, there’s dead people, again and again. This is horrendous. But you know, many servicemen want to go there, because we are really well-paid for that…” I took his answer as a token of confidence and thanked him for his honesty and his perceptiveness.

At this very moment, some servicemen, amongst the top officers, are against the decisions taken by the government, to dispatch troops in Afghanistan without being able to change the course of events.

I often think about the General De Bollardière’s awareness, who was talking about the - I quote - “monstrousness of the war, which is against human dignity: war is only the pitiful reality of relationship between human beings, the bloody and staggering omen of their powerlessness, the absurd expression of their misery”. End of quote. His bright thoughts on the Army were as a betrayal towards this “tribe”. “The Army”, well-known for being as silent as the grave, does not forgive the enlightened “whistle-blowers”.

End of career for that great man who denounced torture during the Algerian War.

Each time a woman is elected president, the hope of Peace is consolidated.

If only each mother on Earth would teach to her child, as early as possible, naturally, as breathing: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”.

These few words, this one sentence, should be enough to lead us all to pacifism. It has been two thousand years since a prophet said it. How many thousands of years to apply it?

Thank you for your attention.