Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-12-Speech-3-261"
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"en.20011212.13.3-261"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, my dear friends, I come from a land where the sun beats down and where the horizon is as wide as can be. I come from a country whose land is rich and whose people have little hope, where the forest is boundless but hope is not. From that land I bring greetings to you, Mrs Fontaine, President of the European Parliament. From that land I bring friendly greetings to you, honourable Members of this generous Parliament. I bring brotherly greetings to Mrs Nurit Peled-Elhanan and Mr Izzat Ghazzawi, the couple with whom I share this honour. From that country named Angola I bring greetings to the illustrious guests at this Plenary Assembly. Nor should we forget the social, written, spoken and televised communication that makes the five continents one huge human village. Finally, and this is where I probably should have begun, from Angola I bring greetings to this historic city of Strasbourg, home to the European Parliament, a city that I discovered when I was still young, attracted not only by its cultural climate but mainly by the memory of the many missionaries from Alsace who, together with Portuguese missionaries, brought the gospel to our land. So, to all of you, ladies and gentlemen, I bring a warm embrace from Angola.
Today, with the confidence of the European Union, whose parliamentarians have placed the prestigious Sakharov Prize in our hands, I humbly call for a bilateral and simultaneous cease-fire that will open the way to a cessation of hostilities, as we have called for so many times. Because we can still make up for lost time. Agostinho Neto, Angola’s first President, left us these mysterious verses which I have written down:
‘I no longer wait
I am the man for whom others wait’
Every Angolan is the man or woman for whom others wait. Help them to live! This is why the financial component of this Prize will be going to the Ecumenical Fund for Peace, in other words, to promote education for peace and for national reconciliation amongst the population. So, my friends, help Angola to live! Thank you very much!
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Mrs Fontaine, honourable Members of the European Parliament, Mr José Ribeiro e Castro, the party that has accompanied me here, amongst whom I wish to mention the Deputy Minister for Culture and the Ambassador of Angola, the President of the European Parliament, in her kind letter officially announcing the distinction that befell my unworthy person and congratulating me, wrote that peace has always been one of her main objectives and that my commitment to the ecumenical cause had raised her awareness. In fact, the Episcopal Conference of Angola and São Tomé, which I have chaired for almost four years, wrote in its pastoral message of March 2000 “we cannot spread the gospel without promoting peace”. The Interdenominational Committee for Peace in Angola, also formed last year, seeks to be the voice of believers on the crucial matter of peace.
In a letter dated 11 January 2001, His Excellency the President of the Republic, José Eduardo dos Santos, in response to a Christmas message of mine, wished me every success in the pastoral action that I am undertaking in the quest for peace and for the happiness of the Angolan people. And on the day following the announcement of the Sakharov Prize winners, the chorus of congratulations from everywhere and from all layers of society, including the President of the Republic and from Mr Jonas Savimbi, highlighted the unifying dimension of the prize; Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and its quality of stimulating the pursuit of ideals of peace. Unfortunately, in the land of prizewinners, particularly in mine, we have witnessed actions and behaviour which, humanly speaking, could invalidate the precepts put forward by the parliamentarians of the European Union. But our sixth sense tells us that this will not happen. The message of the 2001 Sakharov Prize is safe, and so I can assure you that there are many things that will not be the same as they were before.
I believed and that was why I spoke out. It is impossible not to speak when faced with the tragedy of the Angolan situation. Living side by side with a simple and suffering people qualifies us to speak in their name both in recognising the efforts made by the government and in the quest for improvements that the people themselves are calling for. I said a few days ago that in the 14 years of anti-colonial war there was just one year, 1973, that recorded an unheard of rate of financial growth, whereas in the twenty-five years of the civil war, we have only seen a decrease, that has grown worse day by day, particularly since 1998. Hunger, nakedness and disease have created images which, if caught and projected onto the screens of the warlords would perhaps also give these people a sleepless night and make them begin to think about Angola. Malnutrition affects 47% of the population in some provinces, as attested by the appeal for humanitarian aid launched recently by the United Nations.
The war in Angola has various causes. Thinking about the Lord who brought us here, to Strasbourg today, 12 December, half way between the 10th, the day of the Declaration of Human Rights, and the 14th, the day of His death, I see that I could focus on one of the causes: intolerance. It was not by chance that the UN declared 1995 as the United Nations Year of Tolerance. Still echoing in our ears and in our conscience are the words spoken by Pope John Paul II on World Peace day this year and those of Federico Mayor Zaragoza, the then director of UNESCO, when he said, and I quote, ‘Humanity must be able to dedicate itself to peace, safeguard it, re-establish it and rebuild it by creating a space for dialogue, consultation and reconciliation. No more violence!’
It has been very difficult to speak of tolerance in my country because the roots of intolerance run deep, being anchored in the political bipolarisation between the two most popular parties: the MPLA and UNITA. In this climate, a speech on the subject of tolerance is seen either as a betrayal of these parties, which have great popular support – and are, ironically, at war with one another – or as a reactionary attitude, if expressed by an independent person. Given this climate, to speak of change would mean sharing power with rivals; but, for us, the church and civil society, the first change would be to accept tolerance as an issue of survival which is, therefore, necessary, from the foundations to the roof, from the political parties to the government, from civil society and the churches themselves to the national project. Tolerance is the key word, as Locke teaches us, if we want to find a human basis for integrating conflict resolution, including our own, for a harmonious development. In the case of Angola, tolerance would be given form in the specific aspect of national reconciliation, whose foundations can only be reached through permanent and inclusive dialogue, able to break this never-ending cycle of war. Tolerance requires solidarity and fraternity and the lesson that we have learned from Europe is the lesson emerging from this great Assembly, which is meeting here today. Human fraternity, pervading all facets of our relationship, also draws our attention to the economic angle and its ambiguities. In this ‘South’ where we live, wealth generates both war and signs of solidarity. Speaking of mining in particular, I would say that it is already time to increase the transparency that would make it more difficult to finance conflicts but which would also encourage social investment …
... affecting the standard of living of Angolans, and this would be achieved by themselves, not by something that looks like charity.
To conclude, I shall refer to the thought that inspired the campaign that brings me today to this podium to receive the Sakharov Prize: help Angola to live! This was the challenge that the Catholic Church set the Soviet Union and the United States in 1986 in its assessment of the first ten years of national independence. After spending another 16 years at war, we launched the same message. But to whom, this time? To the MPLA and to UNITA to whom we repeated with a breaking heart: twenty-six years of history have been stained with blood – the blood of brothers killed by brothers, and closing the doors to dialogue would open them to a war without a visible end. This can be read in the pastoral message issued by the bishops."@en1
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"Loud, sustained applause"1
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