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The Third World Group, established in 1974, is a national voluntary non-governmental organisation based in Malta that is committed towards Third World issues and people who live in "depressed" areas in Malta and abroad In 1997, the Government of Malta awarded the Third World Group the first prize in the second edition of the prize known as “National Recognition: Youth in Society” (Gharfien Nazzjonali: Zghazagh fis-Socjetà). |
JUST BOMBING Strategies
for Enduring Injustice
Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan
According
to estimates by Marc
Herold, a US economics professor
at the University of New
Hampshire, at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between
October 7 and December 10 alone. This amounts to an average of 62 innocent
deaths a day - and an even higher figure than the 3,234 now thought to
have been killed in New York and Washington on September 11. His shocking
study is based on corroborated reports from aid agencies, the UN,
eyewitnesses, TV stations, newspapers and news agencies around the world. The
figure does not include those who died later of bomb injuries, nor those
who have died from cold and hunger because of the interruption of aid
supplies or because they were forced to become refugees by the
bombardment. It does not include military deaths (probably over 10,000),
or those prisoners who were slaughtered in Mazar-i-Sharif, Qala-i-Janghi,
Kandahar airport and elsewhere. And these figures are a month old.
Fr.
Grech Marguerat will be discussing whether the “War on Terror” is an
acceptable, or even vaguely adequate response to the horrible acts of
terrorism committed in the US and elsewhere. Arundhati Roy believes that the
people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban or their
terrorist networks and the US government. “All
the beauty of human civilisation - our art, our music, our literature -
lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles.” Recent
events have also shown that language, and consequently freedom of thought,
have fallen prey to the giants’ “War of Terror”. “Terrorism” now
means what the giants want it to mean; “restraint” is “preparing for
war”; “bombs” become “intelligent” when they kill thousands of
civilians without shocking the stock markets; people are “civilized”
when they “snuff terrorists out” by bombing the
Kajakai dam power station, or Kabul's telephone exchange, or when they use
anti-personnel cluster bombs in urban areas. The
fact is that the world has not yet found an acceptable definition of what
"terrorism" is. One country's terrorist, as events in Chechnya,
Palestine, and India have shown, is too often another¹s freedom fighter.
At the heart of the matter, writes Roy, lies “the world's deep-seated
ambivalence towards violence. Once violence is accepted as a legitimate
political instrument, then the morality and political acceptability of
terrorists (insurgents or freedom fighters) becomes contentious, bumpy
terrain. The US government itself has funded, armed and sheltered plenty
of rebels and insurgents around the world.”
Fr.
Pierre Grech Marguerat SJ is director of the Centre for Faith and Justice
and the Jesuit Refugee Service (Malta). The Centre deals with issues of
social justice in Malta and in the world in general and publishes the
weekly column "The Mustard Seed" in The Malta
Independent on Sunday. He has travelled widely and has recently
returned from a community development seminar held in Salzburg. For more information please refer to the website of the Third World Group at http://webgtd.cjb.net or write to webgtd@yahoo.com Adrian Grima January 9, 2002
Read also
"Infinite Injustice" by Diomede Amadeo Cassar Dossier: Civilian Casualties - Full Report
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Fl-1996, il-Grupp waqqaf il-Koperattiva Kummerc Gust, l-unika organizzazzjoni tal- kummerc gust f'Malta, u fl-2001 kien wiehed mill-fundaturi tal-Forum ghall-Gustizzja u l-Koperazzjoni flimkien ma' Kopin (Koperazzjoni Internazzjonali) u l-Koperattiva Kummerc Gust. L-ikbar inizjattiva pubblika tal-Grupp kienet l-organizzazzjoni ta' Gimgha Afrikana fl-1999, bis-sehem ta' personalitajiet ewlenin mill-Afrika u b'kollaborazzjoni ma' ghadd kbir ta' organizzazzjonijiet Maltin u barranin. | ||
Write to us: webgtd@yahoo.com P.O. Box 289, Valletta. CMR 01 Tel. 244865 (L-Arka) |
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