Today, 15 February 2023, marks the twentieth anniversary of the huge demonstrations against the war in Iraq. Never before had so many people protested in the streets of Lleida, Girona, Tarragona and Barcelona. The pacifist citizen protests made President George Bush nervous: he stated that “the security policy of the United States cannot depend on whether there are many or few people in the streets of Barcelona.”
Twenty years later, war has broken out in Europe. And, despite the flagrant violation of international law and the continuous war crimes committed by the invader, we have not been able to show the same level of rejection of Russian expansionism.
Nevertheless, I would like to think that Catalan society remains committed to the values of peace, human rights and democracy. But this war has no precedent in our context, and that makes it difficult to analyze. It forces us to transcend mental frameworks and leave our comfort zone. Through peace initiatives, we must learn how to adapt our message to the current circumstances.
I would say that at one extreme there are those who believe that the military defeat of Russia is necessary and possible and, with this in mind, are betting on strengthening the military capacity of Ukraine above all other considerations. At the other extreme, there are those who blame NATO for provoking the war and the arms industry for fueling it. But most people are somewhere in between: perplexed by the Russian aggression, in solidarity with the people of Ukraine and understanding their right to legitimate self-defense. And most people are also concerned about the risk of a military escalation without the perspective of a solution, with the destruction of human lives that this entails, and the risk that the spiral of action-reaction could lead to a wider confrontation, even to a Third World War.
Caught up in geopolitical debates, we risk losing sight of the opinion of the citizens affected by the violence. We must keep in mind that in Catalonia we can protest whenever we want. But protesting in Russia or Belarus nowadays is forbidden and whoever defies this prohibition faces imprisonment, torture and even death. As we heard during the recent visit to Catalonia of representatives of the organizations that won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, Putin’s regime has closed the Memorial Center and all of its board members live in exile. The Lukashenko regime has kept the director of the Belarusian human rights center Viasna in prison and, here too, most of its members have had to go into exile. Neither NATO nor the military industry is to blame for this repression. The blame lies with authoritarian regimes that violate the human rights of their citizens.
At the same time, the Center for Civil Liberties of Ukraine has been working for years to defend human rights in their country. They have had no problems denouncing violations committed by government agents. Furthermore, over the last few years, the country has evolved considerably, and they are rightly proud of having contributed to a cultural and structural change in Ukrainian society, which today does not allow the despotism and corruption that characterized the governments before the nonviolent Maidan revolution.
Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are close to us because they are European. But they are also far from us because we don’t have much contact with them and we understand little about their context. In light of this reality, we would be well advised to acknowledge our doubts, without prejudice or dogmatism. And to build a crosscutting narrative that allows us to denounce the imperialist aggression in Ukraine and the violations of human rights in Russia and Belarus and, at the same time, to oppose the global arms race that divides the world into opposing blocs that seek security through an increase in military spending.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the death of Mohandas Gandhi. Let us remember that the pacifist message is not utopian. It is the essence of the European Union and of the United Nations.
Article published in Crític on 15 February 2023.