The Tomb Of My Murdered Friends (about the UN workers killed)

[WilliamPitt]

The Tomb of My Murdered Friends
By Bernard Kouchner
Le Monde

Friday 22 August 2003

http://truthout.org/docs_03/082603B.shtml

They were there for all the real battles, the ones that do us honor because their stakes are peace, justice, democracy, and the protection of the weak. Their names: Sergio Vieira de Mello, Nadia Younès, Jean-Sélim Kanaan, Fiona Watson and many others. Together in Kosovo and elsewhere, we’ve shared fraternity, hope, promises that barbarism has just sacked.

They’re dead in Baghdad, murdered for our lives’ purpose: to act without respite on the ground, so that the world may be less stupid and bloody.

They died as they lived, with courage, with talent, and with lucidity, in the service of a forgetful, fickle, and ungrateful international community.

Beyond their specific mission, defined by a skimpy UN Security Council mandate easily criticized from our still peaceful countries: at the margin of the Ango-American command, they tried to establish a dialogue, to start reconciliation, to prevent all fanaticism.

Their bodies were cleared as well as they could be from the rubble of the barely guarded UN headquarters. Dozens of Iraqis died or were wounded along with them. After having attacked the embassy of Jordan, a moderate Muslim country, the terrorists chose for their target the symbol of neutrality and peace that is the United Nations.

Sergio wasn’t only the handsome and brave Brazilian diplomat who went from one war to another, one impossible mission to one still more exposed.

I bear witness for the more than thirty years he was my friend: he was a committed politician of the left, a militant for human rights, and a righteous person. From Latin America to Africa, from the Balkans to East Timor, he stamped a new form of diplomatic interference that I consider the true globalization of hope with his elegance, his charm, his stubbornness also, and his friendly loyalty to Kofi Annan.

(snip)

We must follow in the footsteps of our valiant friends and give power to the Iraqis through elections. To this end, it is urgent to enlarge the UN mandate and give them the mission and the means to reconstruct and democratize Iraq. If a specific resolution is finally voted, then the international community will be furnished with a clear mandate that it would be appropriate to fulfill in coordination with the Provisional Iraqi Council. With soldiers for military duties, police for the indispensable security and tranquility of families, technicians to reestablish electricity, gas distribution, and all the essentials of daily life, civilian volunteers to help set up political parties and prepare elections.

France, given its previous positions, would be well-advised to take the initiative for this indispensable collective surge. Our enemies are not the Americans, but terrorism. And still the Americans must realize that it’s also in their interest. If not, we will soon be saying that Beirut was nothing compared to Baghdad.

Adieu Sergio, Nadia, Fiona, Jean-Sélim and the others who represented us so well. You have fallen on the field of battle as soldiers of peace. A piece of my heart lies there with you. A scrap of the last humanitarian innocence, a little of the hope for humanism will go under ground along with you.

...more, worth a full read...

[AP]

1. "committed politician of the left...a righteous person"

I heard Sergio Vieira de Mello on (I believe it was) Fresh Air a few months ago and I was amazed by him. It was so reassuring to feel that there were peopl in positions of influence and power who thought the way he did.

His death is tragedy much larger than I think most people understand. I hope that there are many people out there who aren't afraid and who step up and pick up the flag de Mello dropped and keep charging.