Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 25/Sep 07:08

A will for justice and peace

FR MARTIN SIRJU KESHORN WALCOTT made a golden throw a few days ago at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo – great news! US warships and a nuclear submarine in the waters of the southern Caribbean – bad news! Bad news on several fronts because there are many reasons leading to this apparent partnership between the US and the TT government. The Catholic Church, when it speaks for itself on moral matters, often speaks to the world at the same time. It has done so on nuclear disarmament, global income disparity and global debt, gender issues, climate change, migration, peace and other issues. It speaks a resounding word of peace through the papacy of Leo XIV. Pope Leo was elected on May 8, the very day India launched missile strikes on Pakistan and eight decades after the end of World War II – “Victory Day,” they call it, as if in war anybody wins. Leo continues from his predecessor Francis who observed that “the world is heading towards World War III piecemeal.” We have been experiencing terror here for decades, Jamaica and Haiti too, and increasingly so in Caribbean islands – unabated crime, violence and gangs. We find ourselves immersed in a thick cloud of collective trauma, whether we are conscious of it or not. Many pointed out the social demerit of Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar’s words: “Kill them all, violently!” Few have asked why. Never has any Prime Minister expressed so emotionally and angrily utter frustration by our inability to control escalating crime levels related to the drug trade and ammunition. There has been mounting frustration and a sense of futility since the infamous Scott Drug Report of 1985. What has been done since? People feel almost nothing. We have had our law enforcement officers trained in the US, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands and who knows where else. Our crime dilemma cannot be due to lack of knowledge about detecting or solving crime. There are bigger players at work. When one speaks to people in the know about crime in the Caribbean it is always a story of dirty politics, dirty business, corrupt law enforcement officials and exploitation of the underdog. Sooner or later, something had to be done about drug interdiction in Caribbean waters. The source of drugs, experts say, is emanating mainly from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, with Venezuela being a springboard for “island hopping” of drugs. If the presence of US warships is here to partner with our government to intercept these drug boats, I think that is understandable. But the presence of a nuclear submarine also spells much more. It reminds me not so much of the US intervention in Grenada in 1983 but, more ominously, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when the US formed a blockade around Cuba to stop the Soviet Union from stockpiling missiles there. The missiles were eventually dismantled due to negotiations between the US and the USSR. In response to this Pope John XXIII responded with the encyclical in April 1963 entitled “Peace in the World.” This really is my greatest worry. In 1962 that Cold War tension brought the world to the brink of World War III. That spectre is coming back to haunt us 63 years later. I worry that if diplomacy does not win out between Guyana and Venezuela, a country more than four times the size of Guyana and with well over 20 times more oil reserves, the Caribbean Basin could become a “zone of war” as opposed to a “zone of peace,” inclusive of a fight for oil reserves. But there is a deeper question to ask. What do we mean by peace? It is true that the Caribbean waters have been relatively peaceful, but are we still “living together as opposed to living side by side” as Prof Rex Nettleford once described us? Internally this is becoming less and less so. At the Conference on Theology in the Caribbean Today last July, Vicar General of the Bridgetown diocese, Fr Clement Paul, said that gender issues are not the most pressing for Caribbean territories, but rather increasing violence. What are the causes; what are we doing to stop it; what hope are we offering? The Catholic Church has long taught that peace is not the mere absence of war. We do not want war here. We do not want US battleships and a nuclear submarine here. But are we interested at all in the factors that have led us to this point, nationally and as Caricom? I have grave doubts. Pope Paul VI said in his groundbreaking encyclical “On the Progress of Peoples” (1967): “Development is the new name for peace.” Later on in 1972 he would title his World Day of Peace message: “If You Want Peace, Work for Justice.” Internally and regionally, we are falling apart because we have forgotten about true development and issues of justice so we have less and less peace. Theodore Parker, Unitarian minister and abolitionist, said it well, "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one...But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice." If in the Caribbean we do not have the will for proper development and justice for our peoples, sooner or later some version of Trump will come and fabricate a peace for us. That moment has come. Fr Martin Sirju is the administrator RC Cathedral The post A will for justice and peace appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.