Actividades

We are contacting you to inform you about the nomination of a Mallorcan for the Nobel Peace Prize of 2000 and to ask for your support. Juan Carrero, committed to the non-violence movement for the past twenty-five years, has recently undertaken various actions to denounce the situations of injustice and the tragic events that have been occurring in the African Great Lakes region, especially since 1990.

His journey began in his youth when he became the third conscientious objector in Spain (except for Jehovah’s Witnesses). It culminated in two 1,000-kilometre walks to Geneva in 1996 (from Barcelona at the beginning of the year and from Assisi towards the end) and his 42-day fast at the doors of the Council of Ministers of the European Union at the beginning of 1997.

The latter action, a final and extreme measure of pressure to denounce the increasingly forgotten and suppressed genocide in the Great Lakes region, had the support of 19 Nobel Prize winners, Commissioner Emma Bonino, the various political groups of the European Parliament and its President JosÈ MarÌa Gil-Robles, dozens of international personalities and hundreds of NGOs.

For many of the most lucid scholars of the situation in the African Great Lakes region, Juan Carrero is the face of the suffering of the victims in the Great Lakes region, and the voice of the thousands and thousands of African brothers and sisters who suffer the greed and lust for power of a minority in this area and their non-African allies.

Juan Carrero has already received, among others, the Courage of Conscience Prize from the hands of the founder of the Peace Abbey (Massachusetts, February 1999) —he is the first Spaniard to receive it— and also the Peace and Solidarity among Peoples Memorial Prize, awarded by the SERPAJ Foundation (Buenos Aires, November 1996).

Truth, justice, democracy and reconciliation are blocked in such a way in the African Great Lakes region that only with support at the rank of the Nobel Prize could a glimmer of hope be seen.

At the beginning of May 1999, the Island Council of Mallorca (the island’s highest governmental body) approved, in a plenary session, support for the nomination of Juan Carrero Saralegui for the Nobel Peace Prize of 2000. We initiate this campaign also with the support of Monsignor Teodoro Úbeda (the Bishop of Mallorca) and Vicens Ferrer, (a winner of the Prince of Asturias Concord Prize).

We include further information in the main document of this nomination. You can also obtain information about the S’Olivar Foundation at www.pangea.org/olivar, and about the African Great Lakes region at www2.minorisa.es/inshuti.

The Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel has stepped forward to present, this December, the nomination of Juan Carrero “knowing for many years – as he says– his commitment, together with his wife Susan Volosin, as a rural teacher in the indigenous communities of northern Argentina, his work and dedication to the service of oppressed peoples, and in particular to those of the African Great Lakes, and his constant social and spiritual action alongside the most dispossessed”.

We hope that we can count on your valuable backing for this nomination. For this purpose we ask you to send us a Letter of Support before the 30th of June of 2,000. (We enclose an example that can be modified).

Thank you very much, in the name of all the victims of injustice and violence in the African Great Lakes region.

THE CAUSE

1) The African continent, surely like no other, is the great forgotten one, forgotten by all those progressive forces of the international community that are trying to banish barbarity, hunger and misery from the face of the earth. But at the same time, for centuries it has been the object of greedy ‘attention’ and plunder on the part of the governments and great economic interests of the civilised North, fundamentally of the Europeans. The latest global political changes, which have converted the United States into the great dominant world power, have also had their repercussion in this continent. A few years ago it began to be clear that from now on nothing would happen here without the blessing of the US government and of the great multinational corporations within its orbit.

2) Nevertheless, this new stage has not signified the beginning of an African ‘spring’ in the framework of a supposedly new international order, but rather a kind of neo-colonisation. Fundamentally it doesn’t appear to be providing an answer to the crucial problems of Africa, so much as massively exploiting its resources in the conditions most favourable to the great multinationals. A few years ago Ronald Brown, Secretary of State for Commerce, stated quite openly and with the most expressive and African image “for many years African business has been dominated by the Europeans, while North America only controlled 17% of this market. We are now determined to invert this situation and to take the lion’s share ourselves.”

3) It is not by chance that Mr. Brown made such a programmed statement in Uganda. This has been precisely the ‘beachhead’ on which the North American giant has made its ‘landing’ in Africa. Unfortunately this landing wasn’t watched as closely as that of Normandy. This small but strategic country shares a border with that other giant, old Zaire, a true prodigy in natural resources of every kind that occupies the very centre of this great continent. First Rwanda fell, then the democracy in Burundi and later Zaire itself. The important mining contracts already secured are beginning to pay the first dividends that will swell the poor 17% that Mr. Brown was bemoaning.

4) The economic objectives are therefore clear. But the real desolation is that the methods used to achieve them haven’t changed from those used for decades in Latin America. There are too many indicators of this. It seems that in Africa it is still possible to have, as allies, genocidalists more ferocious even than Pinochet, Videla, etc. without European and North American societies discovering what is really happening. Unconfessed alliances have had to be forged with small but powerful lobbies within the ethnic Tutsi minority, lobbies composed of unscrupulous human beings who know that, in order to retain their power in the region, they must eliminate all the leaders of the ethnic Hutus and keep the general public of this ethnic majority down to a ‘manageable’ number. They have also had to implement powerful campaigns in the media which, following the genocide of several hundreds of thousands of moderate Tutsis and Hutus in 1994, hide from public opinion another, much greater genocide of several million Hutus and justify the brutal apartheid which the survivors of this ethnic majority suffer. Three days before he was assassinated, like Monsignor Romero, Monsignor Munzihirwa, Jesuit Bishop of Bukavu had pleaded, “we ask the Tutsi lobbies who lead Rwanda and Burundi to stop organising the misinformation aimed at misleading international opinion”. For sure his sacrifice will not be in vain, but for the time being these extremist Tutsi lobbies have managed to pass off as genocidalists the great victims of this tragedy, the great majority of the people of Rwanda and Burundi. Once again a reduced minority manages, by the most perverse methods, to enslave the whole of a people, deceiving almost the whole world, by means of absolute control of all independent investigations relating to the field they dominate.

5) This entire project of conquering the resources and the markets of Africa received definite sanction in 1997 at the G-7 summit in Denver. The Congressional Black Caucus, a group of black representatives of the North American Congress, has described this summit as the ‘Second Berlin Conference’ in which the governments of the great powers, especially of the United States and France, appear to have agreed on a common policy, setting their differences aside.

6) Africa cannot wait any longer. The tragic events which are happening in the Great Lakes region, especially since 1990 when Rwanda was invaded by the FPR from Uganda, cannot solely nor principally be understood in terms of the ethnic factor, but rather in terms of conflicts of power within the framework of this neo-colonisation. We cannot allow these processes of death and desolation to continue their course. We are therefore calling on all those institutions, organisations and people who know or suspect the truth of what we have stated to support our effort to attain for this cause the Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2000. The resources poured into this macro project and the open wounds in the Great Lakes region are such that the realisation of truth, justice, democracy and reconciliation has become an almost impossible task. Only with the backing of the category of the Nobel Prize could a small glimmer of hope be glimpsed.

“Every cause needs a face”. These were the words of Lewis Randa, Founder and Director of the Abbey of Peace when on the 2nd of last February he awarded Juan Carrero Saralegui with the ‘Courage of Conscience’ prize. He is the first Spaniard to receive this award from this organisation based in Sherbon, Massachusetts. Previous recipients are, amongst others: Ernesto Cardenal, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Mons. Desmond Tutu, Daniel Berrigan, Paul Winter Consort, Helen Caldicott, Brian Willson, Rosa Parks, Ramsay Clark, Maya Angelou, Muhammed Ali, Rigoberta Menchu, Harry Wu, Mikhail Gorbachov, Patch Adams, Hugh Tomson, Sting, Jimmy Carter, Joan Baez, and Greenpeace. It has also been awarded posthumously to, amongst others, Anwar Sadat, Alva Myrdal, Mahatma Gandhi, John Ono Lennon, Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Robert Francis Kennedy and Martin Luther King, etc.

In his speech our candidate exclaimed, “I dare to beg of you in the name of truth and of whatever is noblest and most sacred in this life, in the name of the forefathers who made possible this great and beloved nation which is receiving me today and honouring me with this prize; in the name of the heroes that I admire so much and who throughout the history of this nation have fought for justice and brotherhood, some of whom received the same award that is being given to me today; in the name of the immense pain of millions of our African brothers and sisters, and finally in the name of God who I love and try to serve despite my own limitations and miseries; in the name of all of those, I beg of you to help us in our daring attempt to make the government of this nation change its policy in the region of the African Great Lakes. I beg that you help us to stop your government from supporting, for even one more day, allies who are responsible for great crimes against humanity, even genocide. I beg that you help us make our small voice reach the great masses of North American society by means of the great communications network.

The sooner the debate over the implications and responsibilities of the administration itself opens up, the sooner we will be able to stop this ceaseless genocide. There are many of us who, not only here but also in Europe, do not wish to see squandered the moral prestige of this respected nation. The great causes of peace and justice need this great power that is the United States. On the contrary, as Mahatma Gandhi said so well, everything that is founded on injustice and lies, even the greatest empires, will eventually collapse.

The situation in this region provoked by the lobbies led by Museveni, Kagame, and Buyoya or Bagaza, is morally and politically unsustainable. With such exclusive extremists it will be impossible to achieve the necessary stability for the commercial relations with this African region that the North American administration, the World Bank and some big corporations seek to establish. To achieve the necessary and fair stability that the long-suffering civil populations of these countries deserve more than anyone, a process similar to that in South Africa must recommence without delay in this region. Ethnic apartheid is even crueller than racial apartheid and the international community must not permit it. The great Hutu majority of this region cannot be excluded. I hope that together we can at last find the path towards a just and stable peace.

There are not many who have had sufficient capacity for political analysis and quick reflexes to be aware of all that was behind these conflicts, which they have tried to pass off as purely ethnic. And even less those who from heartfelt compassion and a sense of reality, have been able to find the right way to bring their clear denunciations to the notice of the highest international political institutions, to attract the attention of the media to an Africa that is too far away from us and to obtain support at the highest international level. Conscious, moreover, not only of the political nature of these tragedies, but also of the dominant role of the United States, our candidate has been capable of making his voice heard right in the heart of this nation, earning the support of lucid and committed sectors of society.

But Juan Carrero isn’t a newcomer. The award ‘Courage of Conscience’ was given to him not only for these recent years of fighting for peace and justice in the Great Lakes region, but also for his 25 years’ commitment to non-violence. He was born in Arjona (Jaen) on 18th of February 1951. At the age of 19, after studying in High School and three years of Philosophy, he withdrew with some companions to the S’Olivar estate, in the area of Estellencs, found in the Tramuntana mountain range of Mallorca. For four years he dedicated himself to meditation and prayer in solitude and to the study of Theology. In 1974, during the armaments race of the so-called Cold War, he decided to declare himself a conscientious objector to the obligatory military service, so he became Spain’s third such objector, apart from Jehovah’s Witnesses. The two previous objectors had been sentenced to eight years in prison by the Franco dictatorship. During his time in the non-violence community of Arca in the South of France he met Susana Volosin whom he later married. He also met Lanza del Vasto, the European disciple of Gandhi to whom the latter gave the name Santidhas, Servant of Peace, and entrusted with the mission of spreading non-violence in Europe. On his own initiative he decided to carry out substitute social service, which the law didn’t recognise, working for three years (twice as long as the military service) with the indigenous Argentinean Quechuans, sharing their life and their poverty. He wanted in this way to denounce and oppose the obligation of military service, and refute the accusations of laziness and non-solidarity that the first objectors had suffered.

When the Argentinean military Triad, composed of generals Videla, Massera, and Agosti, made its state coup and began its tortures, crimes, kidnappings and disappearances, he and his wife were already working in the foothills of the Argentinean Andes, on the borders of Chile and Bolivia. At an altitude of almost 4000 m they were teachers in a small school which was attended by more than 50 indigenous Quechuas. He was a fugitive from Spanish military justice and proposed to return to Spain after these years of service endorsed by the Delegation of Missions of the diocese of Mallorca. Just like his dear friend, the Argentinean Adolfo Perez Esqiivel, winner of the Nobel Peace prize in 1980, he and his wife narrowly escaped with their lives. Their school was a few kilometres from Mina Aguilar, a huge mine from which a North American company extracted daily many tons of varied and valuable minerals. A few weeks ago, a quarter of a century later, Mrs. Albright admitted that the North American government had been wrong to give its support to the Latin American dictators.

But for Juan Carrero history has repeated itself 25 years later. The wish to always be with the most forgotten and least protected has taken the S’Olivar Foundation, of which he has been President since it was established in 1992, to work during these last five years in favour of the defenceless civil population of Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo. He knows only too well what is happening in this area. During these last few years he has collected a great deal of evidence of terrible massacres and other acts of extreme cruelty. He and his colleagues have covered almost 2,000 kilometres of peace marches and they reached the limit of their possibilities in a 42-day fast. They have received the support of 19 Nobel Prize winners (Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Elie Wiesel, Joseph Rotblat, Oscar Arias, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Rigoberta Menchu, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mikhail Gorbachev, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Int. Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Betty Williams, John Charles Polanyi, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Jean-Marie Lehn, Jean Dausset, Christian De Duve, Kenneth J. Arrow, François Jacob y Nadine Gordiner) and of practically the entire European Parliament, headed by its President the Spaniard José María Gil-Robles. They

helped the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, Ms. Emma Bonino, in February 1997, accompanied by TV cameras, to meet with the Rwandan Hutu refugees in Zaire which the sophisticated North American satellites had no wish to see, and whose very existence they denied. In Tingui Tingui alone she found 300,000. The Commissioner announced on her return to Brussels, “I have come back from Hell.” Thanks to all that, the lives of some tens of thousands have, for the time being, been saved. But the vast majorities were cruelly eliminated by the Tutsi extremist army by means of arms, hunger, illness and wounds. Juan Carrero stated very clearly in his speech in the Abbey of Peace, “in the same way that the so-called genocide of 1994 cannot be the alibi for the selective and massive elimination of the ethnic Hutus, neither do the grave responsibilities of some European governments in the past of this region excuse those of the government of the USA at the present moment. For this reason I denounce here today that this government has militarily created these armies guilty of genocide. I denounce the participation of the North American administration in the planning of the projects for the invasion of Rwanda in 1990 and of Zaire in 1996, and I denounce the fact that they have sustained the execution of these invasions.”

This fight for an end to the genocide, for truth and justice in the Great Lakes region which, as President of the S’Olivar Foundation he maintains with other European and African organisations (especially the Catalan INSHUTI), is his principal task. But it is not his only one. 0.7% of their budget, which many institutions of Mallorca dedicate to poorer countries, wouldn’t be a reality if his Foundation, together with other NGOs, hadn’t pushed a determined campaign to achieve it. In just three years this institutional aid has multiplied ten-fold. Since 1997 he has also collaborated in the Basque peace initiative with Adolfo Perez Esquivel, mediator for almost two years between ETA and the socialist government of Felipe González. For all this work our candidate has received various awards during the last few years. Apart from the aforementioned ‘Courage of Conscience’ award it is also worth mentioning the ‘Peace and Solidarity between People’ Memorial, which was awarded to him by the SERPAJ Foundation in 1996 (with consultative status in the UN and UNESCO).

All this wonderful solidarity, however, isn’t born from nothing, but rather from an authentic and profound spiritual experience. As our candidate often says, “if we aren’t capable of experiencing for ourselves the pain of the victims, the necessary political analysis will be born corrupt, it will be born out of a theoretical base and a lack of reality.” In the harmony of the mountain of S’Olivar the profound esteem and reverent respect for all living things is palpable. Out of the silence and prayer, as ecumenical as is possible, is born that experience which Gandhi knew how to express so admirably: “I feel a brother to all, and to be happy I need to see the least of my fellow beings happy.” Everyone who goes there returns to ‘civilisation’ with soul and spirit renewed. Through, above all, articles in various communications media, Juan Carrero also tries to take this experience, ineffable but real, of the profound relation and interdependence between all living things, outside the narrow limits of S’Olivar. Without this experience, the President of this cultural Foundation often says, our cultural paradigms will always be reduccionist. Surely ‘dreamers’ such as Gandhi and Luther King smile happily before this small non-confessional Foundation which has as its motto, “to dream and build a more fraternal world in a more habitable environment”.

(For more general information see www.pangea.org/olivar, and about the African Great Lakes region in particular see www2.minorisa.es/inshuti)

TO THE COMMITTEE IN FAVOR OF THE NOMINATION
OF JUAN CARRERO SARALEGUI
FOR THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE FOR THE YEAR 2,000

Avda. Metge Josep Darder, 14, 3º B
07008 PALMA
Tel/Fax 34 - 971 24 18 98
nobel2000@pangea.org

acknowledge the efforts of Juan Carrero Saralegui in the defense of peace, human rights, justice and freedom for the most underprivileged peoples, working from the standpoint of non-violence to which he has been committed all throughout his life’s path.

I especially acknowledge his commitment to the fight for the triumph of these values in the region of the African Great Lakes where a great, albeit silenced, tragedy continues to be enacted.

WITH THIS DOCUMENT, I WOULD LIKE TO SUPPORT THE NOMINATION OF JUAN CARRERO SARALEGUI FOR THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE FOR THE YEAR 2,000.