/View.info/ Greek Committee for International Enlightenment and Peace
OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION “Under the same sky” in GABROVO
Gabrovo, July 7, 2023.
We are still in the aftermath of a great and horrific crime in the middle of the Mediterranean.
The sinking of a rotten little ship and the cruel death of many hundreds of women, men and little children off the coast of Greece.
One new crime among dozens, hundreds of others.
The Mediterranean Sea, the sea that joins the shores of dozens of countries.
What has nurtured many nations over the millennia, has become the cradle of great civilizations. But which, instead of being the space for the peaceful urges of the peoples, for their friendship and prosperity, for their creative and creative works, turns into a wet grave for thousands of defenseless people.
The Mediterranean Sea, the sea in which dozens of military bases are located.
In which hundreds of warships sail, and its skies are torn by thousands of warplanes whose cannons and bombs spew death daily.
But isn’t that the case with the Black Sea?
Are they not so in many other lands and seas, oceans and homelands?
The “drums of war” are being heard louder and louder.
Together with the screeching, disgusting sound of sirens cover the cities of the Middle East, Africa, Ukraine…
Really, whose turn is it now?
The imperialist war in Ukraine between NATO and Russia is dangerously escalating, its full unfolding with disastrous consequences for the nations is visible.
The nightmare of Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes more and more often in the dreams of ordinary people.
We don’t want to see again little girls like twelve-year-old Sadako Sasaki, struck by the “bomb disease”, folding thousands of paper birds with a prayer and a wish, to come to life.
Every one of us, every ordinary person asks?
Who is to blame, what is the reason?
Why should two peoples – Ukrainians and Russians – who have lived as brothers for 70 years, kill each other today? In whose interest is all this happening?
Who wins in the end?
All of us ordinary people who create the goods,
who want to have a creative job,
who want to have a warm home for our children, schools and hospitals…
All of us who want to live but also die with dignity…
All of us, have thought a thousand times,
why should the profits of a paltry minority outweigh the lives of the majority?
Why should “peoples be killed for the riches of the master”, as the great Greek poet Costas Varnalis, born in Bulgaria, said.
Especially us, here in the Balkans!
Here, where our peoples have experienced uprooting and exile many times, where our peoples have forcibly left their holy lands, homelands they loved, where they were born and grew up.
That is why we must not and cannot be indifferent!
We know very well that no one decides to become a refugee by himself.
“No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land…” as Kenyan poet Warsan Sayre says in one of her poems.
That is why we are against the wars of the imperialists!
But we are also against their peace!
Because their peace is no less dangerous than their wars.
That’s why we say as loud as we can the words of Bertolt Brecht:
“War is born of their peace, as a son is born of a mother.
It bears the same ominous marks.
Their war kills what their peace has left intact.”
That is why we are also against the policy of the EU, against its recent decision, which buries the Geneva Convention on political asylum and the rights of refugees.
We are people!
We deny, do not accept that our prosperity is based on the suffering and poverty of other people!
We deny, let’s not accept that the wealth of an insignificant minority is above the life of the great majority!
We know that precisely these countless riches are the reason for the plundering of nations, for the wars, for the death they sow, for the caravans of refugees.
These riches do not belong to them, they belong to the peoples who are their creators!
We denied the ideology of the nationalists,
who sow their racist hatred.
Their misanthropic screams glorify hatred and prepare wars.
We don’t want people to be divided into black and white, non-religious and non-religious, superior and inferior.
For us, all people are equal!
We thank the art group “Fire Art”, we thank the Cultural Center “Nazum Hikmet” from Istanbul, the artists and organizers of this wonderful exhibition, for giving us the opportunity to address you and congratulate you.
Cultural activity and artistic creativity go along the same path, in the same direction as the struggle for peace.
They walk together, hand in hand, one complementing the other.
Your works are like the Burning Heart of Danko, the character of Maxim Gorky.
They illuminate and help people find the way to a bright and good future.
We fight together for peace and social justice!
We fight for friendship, cooperation and solidarity between peoples, for a society without exploiters and exploitation.
We know well that mutual aid and solidarity are the great weapons of nations, this is their great strength.
We are fighting for the nations to believe in this power of theirs.
We are optimistic, we know that the nations will win!
#fight #peace #social #justice
