Written contribution / Contribution écrite
by / par

Mazhar Ali TAHIRA (Pakistan).
Activist in political and social fields, Secretary General of the Democratic Womens' Association of Pakistan, which received the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non Violence

PEACE, TOLERANCE AND EQUALITY - THE CHALLENGE
FOR THE NEXT MILLENNIUM

The ideas and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of UNESCO/Les idées et les opinions exprimées dans cet ouvrage sont celles de l'auteur et ne reflètent pas nécessairement les vues de l'UNESCO

Our century has been the most violent, and yet we talk of nuclear arms as something of a great achievement. This is an issue which should no longer be debated because it is unethical, and the experience of Hiroshima should have been enough to convince anyone that there can only be one decent answer to this question: nuclear weapons are an affront to humanity, they are weapons of mass destruction and lead to mass destitution. All of us together must demand immediate elimination of nuclear weapons and give full attention to issues affecting millions of poor people. Today as we are sit together to discuss a culture of peace, it is essential that we demand and end to all nuclear arms.

Today we also face other awesome problems of human history poverty, oppressions of different kinds and the destruction of our fragile environment. These are serious and we need immediate answers to solve them. For this week more freedom to participate in developing our societies, without conversion, and with freedom.

Our values will come to the fore, if the society is not based on control by greed, private wealth, and the desire for maximum personal gain. Unfortunately today politics means how to make money and accumulate wealth, a wealth which in reality belongs to the masses, who have very little say in matters concerning themselves. Unless and until we can provide the majority of our people a voice which is heard, there will be in justice. Unfortunately the sort of democracies we have don't provide people their right to give their opinion on matters which are important to them or their nations. We have to have a society which is built on values other than greed and selfishness. We have to have a society there we can see our children laugh, play, read, eat and the opportunity to express themselves. Today we have all the wealth in the hands of a few, and the majority who have nothing at all. This sort of system cannot last, no matter how much moral, financial and military support it has from those who have power. Therefore friends, we have to demand a system which provides for a majority of our people to live in better conditions - Poverty is humiliating and it must be eliminated.

The greatest lesson of this century is that peace is the highest ideal. Our century suffered two wars, each more ferocious than all previous wars. The price humanity paid in these two conflicts has been frightening, and the option before us today, a nuclear war, will be so devastating that the two previous will seem away from deterrence to disarmament.

Democracy at the global level, as a framework for setting norms for international relations has not kept pace with the march of democracy as a system of national governance. The rich and the powerful make and unmake rules to suit their partisan interests. As we move forward to the twenty first century, this situation is totally unsustainable. No nation, however powerful militarily, can for long pursue interests that do not harmonise with the interests of the global community.

In the month of April we have been seeing horrible pictures on both BBC and CNN of thousands of refugees marching to nowhere and of bombardment of Belgrade. The media wanted to frighten us with NATO power. It wanted us to submit, to appreciate the powerful fancy military equipment. Nobody with any sense was appreciative of either the bombardment or was insensitive to the ;plight of refugees, yet many thought that NATO should not have intervened in this violent manner and should have gone through the UN, and should have shown more patience. It neither helped the Kosovors or persuaded the Serbs to give up. As a matter of fact the Serbs became more adamant to side with Milosevic against the NATO powers. As the Kosovors position became even worse than before, NATO powers must not forget that when people are humiliated by powerful military might they become enemies. The same happened in Iraq.

When we propagate peace culture we must at the same time ask our media to tell the truth. Few believe the stories spread by either side. We people living in the sub continent of India seldom believe what is told to us through our media, specially we in Pakistan. During the most shameful intervention of the army in then East Pakistan in 1971, we were told hundreds of incorrect stories and everyday we were told that our army was great and that it will never surrender. The end result was that when the army surrendered and we viewed the picture of the surrender, people went out of their minds, the fundamentalist parties demonstrated outsider our TV station to stop showing the truth, because the truth hurts.

It is very important that this one sided war in Yugoslavia must stop, and innocent lives saved. These air strikes tested as "success" in Iraq are doomed to fail in this instance. However, the real threat is not for the Serbs alone, but for the institution of the United Nations which is supposed to be a world body. By unilaterally deciding to bomb Yugoslavia, the US has turned the UN and all its peace-keeping missions redundant. If we are looking for peace and demanding peace culture we must allow the UN to play its' role and not NATO. This precedent is dangerous and can be used over and over again.

Dear delegates, one of the other more serious problems which faces us today is intolerance. People have arms and they kill as easily as they drive a car. In our country after the Afghan war, lots of arms were left over with the groups who were fighting in Afghanistan, and these arms were never recovered or were deliberately left with the groups close to the CIA and the Inter Services Agency. Hence so much intolerance in our country, and so much violence. All propaganda and lip service about Islamic democracy, Islamic economy, Islamic welfare state, justice, equality, and fundamental rights is really hypocrisy and double dealing. What the rulers do in the name of Islam means that the present social and economic system of dependent capitalism is the Islamic system, combined with intolerance and suppression of women and religious minority.

We in Pakistan have suffered immensely because of many dictatorships, but most of all through Zia's dictatorship which denigrated women to the lowest position.

In recent years the rule of the Talibans in Afghanistan is further downgrading women. Islamic fundamentalism in essence looks upon women as subhumans, fit only for household slavery and as means of procreation. Such an outrageous view has incredibly been elevated to the status of official policy with the government of the Taliban. All Islamic fundamentalists target women's rights as a first priority, citing medieval shariat law as their authority.

In Pakistan hundreds of Madrassahs (religious schools) created during Gen: Zia-ul-Yaq's regime, are schools where hatred is preached, where it is taught that women are to be treated as second class human beings, where boys are taught to use arms to fight Jihads wherever. These boys, mostly from poor households are given food and shelter, and the parents given some stipend to remain content. Most of these children are now sent to Kashmir to fight Jihad, others fight each other or the Pakistani citizenry according to their sectarian positions. They are told wild stories of what they will get in heaven after they die and what great heroes they will become if they live. Recently I was in a small hill station when a woman came crying that both her sons had been killed in Kashmir, and that they (the madrassa mullahs)took them to teach them how to read, but the parents were completely unaware about the jidah part of it.

A culture of peace and harmony between different people having different religions, different sects, different beliefs, can only be created if our education system changed. Today in our sub continent, but more so in our country, we are taught incorrect history, we are taught to hate rather than love. Our educational system does not turn literate people who can think. During the Zia are our universities which were literally run by a fundamentalist party, did not permit students to ask questions, nor did they allow women professors to smile. When boys and girls with degrees between the late seventies and eighties went looking for jobs, they were refused, because thousands of degrees were literally bought and had no value and thousands of students were unaware of what was happening in the world, within the country of was about their own subjects.

To transform these retrogressive and "immoral" values which have taken root in our society, we must have secular states which do not use religion for political and social gain, because once religion become dominant in stato structures, many troubles raise their heads. Religious rituals, shorn of real morality, easily become political instruments in the hands of oppressors and exploiters, and the powerful ruling classes further develop them as the ideology of a political party.

Through all these so called Islamic processes the ruling classes have deliberately attempted to politically exploit the religious rituals for preserving the neo-colonial capitalist structures. These religious rituals has reversed the moral scales, given false standards to society, and has labeled fake as real, and wrong as right. The process of "Islamisation" is therefore in reality a process of moral degeneration which has destroyed the moral fiber of Pakistani society.

I have not heard Mullahs preach against heroin, nor against violence against women, nor against shooting those who do not agree with their point of view. In our country people kill each other daily because of their differences in the in the interpretation of Islamic laws. Dear delegates, I believe that religion is a private matter and the State should not interfere, because it does then there is chaos. All religions teach harmony, all religious are for peace and respect for different religions, so why should difference in the way of worship upset others'.

The document which you sent us: "Challenges of the global World", we fully endorse. We also endorse that "Widening material inequalities - have always separated people, and from which are borne new forms of discrimination that deprive entire nations and peoples of their fundamental rights".

Here I may say certain things which might not appeal to some people. I still say them because they are of great importance to the change of ethics and moral behaviour.

When big powers advocate human rights and the whole world media follows suit, we would like to ask: "What sort of human rights do they preach?» Have the big powers all the rights the preach and should the poor countries only limit themselves to those rights which do not disturb the big powers? When we follow big power interests, we get the full support, but when their own interests are interfered with, these same powers then side with the dictators and scoundrels to achieve their own interests. During the Afghan war, when women were being tortured in Pakistan, when people were being flogged, when human rights were being flouted, American CIF had the biggest station in Islamabad. Heroin was allowed to travel from Peshawar to Karachi by National logistic cell trucks; arms were carried back to Peshawar in exchange; and Generals were involved in all this; the big powers at that moment did not think of human rights nor did they think of the people of our country who themselves would become the victims of this horrible drug, yet we hear tales of human rights being protected.

Now when we watch CNN and BBC we see whole cities being burnt, people terrorised, bridges destroyed - It is devastating to see this and it reminds us of the second world war when millions perished. Then the NATO says "sorry" they have killed civilians, it is amazing. And how has the bombing helped the people of Kosovo? After the bombing started thousands left their homes, so how did the NATO violence help those in trouble? As I said earlier the UN should have been consulted and allowed to settle matters not this NATO powers. It seems that both in the Iraq war and this war it was an exhibition of new weapons of destruction, and an offer to the world markets to buy more to help the arms merchants to continue producing more arms to kill. So dear Delegates, when we talk of peace and human rights, we must first of all demand and end to all nuclear weapons and an end to multinationals indulging in arms industries, then alone will the poor countries trust those who talk of human rights.

As the millennium draws to a close, it invites us to think of the past and to plan a future, a future which gives us security to live in peace and happiness. A future which guarantees education to all, a future which eliminates all weapons of destruction, a future which provides harmony to existence societies, and allows diversity to be present-much like the vast variety of phenomena which creates the wonder of nature itself, coming together in sometimes curious ways to form a whole which inspires both awe and almost universal admiration. When efforts are made to wipe out this diversity, then the society becomes weaker. So let us create a society which gets people closer, to think, to discuss, to create a better world for us to live in.

"Only a global strategy based on the culture of peace with its new values orientations, mentalities and forms of behaviour can provide answers to these global challenges". No one power in the world can become the conscience of the universe, it has to be a united effort with trust and sincerity.