LEO\'S FUNERAL Homily at the funeral of Leo Seemanpillai Fr Pancras Jordan O.P. St Mary of the Angels Church,

Vol 39 No.3

September 2014

LEO'S FUNERAL Homily at the funeral of Leo Seemanpillai Fr Pancras Jordan O.P. St Mary of the Angels Church, Geelong

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So, during earthis Friends Eucharist I imagine that Leo This wouldafternoon be callingwe us for are an gathuprising ered of to say thank you and to decency, say goodan bye insurgency to our beloved of hospitality, brother an andinsurrection friend Leo of Seemanpillai humanity, generoswho was ity killed andby the harsh, unjust and cruel kindness. policy of our government. We are also Igathered am sureto Leo pray would that be ourinviting brother,uswho to mutiny. shared inTo thedisobey sufferings the order of Christ, to fear, may unwelcome, rise with Christ rejection in his of resurrection. asylum seekWe findto ourselves, again, ers and oppose the again wishesand of our leaders. heartbroken for the individuals and But this isn’t families destroyed a call toby arms, ourto political take over theastreets games: political with game righteous whereby anger people slowly broken in a system of and are clever placards. detention that dehumanises indefinite Whiledisempowers; and our leaders have a political determined game to hurt asylum whereby people seekersare until locked their spirits in the are of legislated poverty that is life limbo broken, on a bridging and tovisa. convince every persecutedfind We person ourselves, on our planet again,that despairing asylumthe for seekers Australian character, being shaped leaders who normalise will notby find safe refuge here, then cruelty, people and A rob everyvilify act of voiceless compassion is protest. the world’s message of most vulnerable people of not only their rights, but their dignity. welcome is rebellion. “The current Government It’s time to make a stand. It Policy is time has to about it athe cruelty that we does no honour consider Australia want to live to andour thenation,” The Australian Catholic Bishops their May values whichannounced we wish to in exemplify. It statement onmerely the issue Asylum is time to not marchofagainst Seekers. brutality, They proceed to say It is a policy of ‘dehumanisation’ andkindbut to embody hospitality and ‘institutionalised There’s no ness. To not only cruelty’. rage against doubt that Australia’s clear message to people fleeing tyranny in our direction is “You are not welcome here.” This is unambiguous. Current policy is not about creating an “orderly sys-

system” or “saving people from drowning” Billions of dollars are being spent on making people’s lives – in detention centres and in our communities – as miserable as possible, in the hope that they will return home and convince others not to head in our direction. Our government is actively inhospitable, proactively brutal and intentionally determined to break the spirits of people like Leo who once imagined they might find protection from oppression in our care. In a nation committed to unwelcome, with a government committed to cruelty, compassion is protest and welcome is rebellion. So, during this Eucharist I imagine that Leo would be calling us for an uprising of decency, an insurgency of hospitality, an insurrection of humanity, generosity and kindness. I am sure Leo would be inviting us to mutiny. To disobey the order to fear, unwelcome, rejection of asylum seekers and to oppose the wishes of our leaders. But this isn’t a call to arms, to take over the streets with righteous anger and clever placards. While our leaders have determined to hurt asylum seekers until their spirits are broken, and to convince every persecuted person on our planet that asylum seekers will not find safe refuge here, then every act of compassion is protest. A message of welcome is rebellion. It’s time to make a stand. It is

time to consider the Australia we want to live and the values which we wish to exemplify. It is time to not merely march against brutality, but to embody hospitality and kindness. To not only rage against injustice, but to model welcome as a lifestyle. We are all called to live as the embodiment of an alternative future for our nation. A future where leadership is measured by the enhancement of human dignity, where , where diversity is celebrated and every human being is considered equal and deserving of fairness and freedom. Every time you welcome an asylum seeker in your community, every time you make a new friend, or help someone settle into their empty house, or write a postcard to a child in detention or help someone learn English, you’re defying the vision and instruction of o ur l e ad er s . Y ou ’ r e s a yi n g, “welcome” to those they wish to reject – Contents Homily at Leo’s funeral……….1 A is for Agriculture, B is for Battlefields, part 1.……………..3 Ukraine, There’s No Way Out….5 2014 Japanese Citizens’ Peace Declaration……………...6 Better Than Hatred…………….7 The Way to Stop the Islamic State………………..9 Anti War Sculpture…………….10 News & Notices……………...11,12

DISARMING TIMES A quarterly journal of Pax Christi Australia. It aims to provide members and interested peacemakers with peace news and views both local and international. We endeavour in each edition to reflect the three-fold emphasis of Pax Christi which engages members in study, Nonviolent action and prayer for peace, justice, human rights, development and inter-faith and intercivilisation dialogue.

PAX CHRISTI AUSTRALIA is an Australia-wide Christian Peace Movement, affiliated with Pax Christi International. Human rights, justice and integrity of creation are central to its work. We take a stand against militarism, nuclear weapons and the arms race. As an ecumenical Christian movement Pax Christi fosters the spiritual and scriptural dimensions of peace-making.

Disarming Times is compiled by a team of Pax Christi Australia members: Joe Camilleri, Rolf Sorenson, Harry Kerr, Rita Camilleri and Barbara Hadkinson (Vic) Claude Mostowik and Maggie Galley (N.S.W.) Pancras Jordan and Claire Cooke (Qld) INFORMATION ABOUT JOINING PAX CHRISTI

Pax Christi Victoria • Visit our website: www.paxchristi.org.au P.O. Box 31 Carlton Sth Vic. 3053 Tel: 03 9893 4946 • Blog: http://paxchristi-or.blogspot.com Fax: 03 9379 1711 • See Membership Form on Notice Board email: [email protected] Christi New South Wales • ContactPax a Pax Christi branch: P.O. Box A 681 Sydney Sth 1235, Tel: 02 9550 3845 or 0411 450 953 Fax: 02 9519 8471 email: mscjust @smartchat.net.au Pax Christi Queensland PO Box 305 Carina QLD 4152 Tel: 0415 461 620 email: [email protected]

Unsourced material in Disarming Times may be copied with due acknowledgement. A copy of the publication would be appreciated. Not all views expressed in this journal are equally shares by Pax Christi Australia. Disarning Times is printed by Arena Press 2-14 Kerr St. Fitzroy 3065 Ph 03 9416 0232

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and you’re combating the insidious invasion of heartlessness into our character and communities. I know of no recent survey of attitudes in the Australian Catholic or Christian population towards the same issue, but it cannot have escaped us that the current policies have been put in place by a government led by a Catholic (and former seminarian) who wears his faith on his sleeve, and that the Minister for Immigration lists “Church” as his favourite hobby in “Who’s Who”. An Australian MP, making his maiden speech in Parliament in 2008, said, “From my faith I derive the values of loving kindness, justice and righteousness, to act with compassion and kindness, acknowledging our common humanity and to consider present inhumane treatment of asylum seekers. His words were an accurate representation of Christian teaching; his current actions betray that teaching, whatever he might claim. This same Scott Morrison, so insistent upon compassion and kindness in his maiden speech, is the same Scott Morrison who in 2014 chooses to ignore his faith’s values, when announcing Leo’s death at a recent press conference, by choosing not to refer to Leo by his name, but as an illegal maritime arrival (IMA). Let me reflect what went wrong with Leo. He wrote notes about visits to doctors and counsellors. He wrote reminders to take his Olanzapine (an anti-psychotic) and Fluoxetine (an anti-depressant). In September, he detailed part of one bad week: Thursday - I have no sleeping Friday - bad dreams, darkness Saturday - I sleep 3 hours Sunday - my birthday”. This government was in power at that time. Furthermore Leo would call refugee advocates, asking if he would be sent back. In October he learnt what Immigration Minister Scott Morrison had told Australians: ”Anyone who may have come from Sri Lanka should know that they will go back to Sri Lanka.”

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These words of Morrison made Leo sick in his soul. Later in his journal he wrote: “If I’m deported back to Sri Lanka, torture is certain because I’m a Tamil” and “In the midst of rejection stand tall. Life is hope.” Over the summer of 2013/14, he struggled. In February he checked into a mental health facility and, while there, he tried to hang himself with a towel. In March he moved into a flat above the Barwon River, and chose the small back room because it had the best natural light. ”He was afraid of the night,” said Cathie Bond, a volunteer and de facto mum to Leo. ”I gave him my grandson’s little night light. He said it was like a shiny moon.” Leo fretted about his fate, and joined Amnesty International and the Australian Red Cross believing membership could somehow help him stay. He went to church on Good Friday and kissed the Holy Cross: “I asked Jesus to bless me, and to bring a resolution to my past struggles and to not have any more struggles in the future.” Outwardly Leo was upbeat, visiting friends and calling people. The day before he died they said he sounded “happy”, “brighter” and “more alert than he had in a long time. My dear friends, for us who work in the area of pastoral care we know often when someone is contemplating suicide they appear to be “happy” because in reality, they have made the decision to end all miseries. They feel a sense of freedom and in the case of Leo, freedom from all cruel policy and denial of fundamental human rights. In the Gospel today we heard what astounding and wonderful things may take place when strangers and refugees are welcomed and given hospitality. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt.25:35). This passage is part of the parable of the judgement of the Son of Man coming in glory. The astonished people who are gathered around

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the throne of the King did not realise at the time that they showed welcome and hospitality to their Lord himself and they voice their amazement. Thus, the criterion for a Christian believer to enter eternal life is based

on welcoming and rendering hospitality to strangers. The Christian believer therefore encounters their Lord in the stranger. It is by the way one treats

the poor and the stranger that one’s worthiness to enter eternal life is tested. Fr Pancras Jordan O.P. is chair of Pax Christi, Queensland

A is for agriculture; B is for battlefields; C is for crossroads, part 1 Bill Clements Bill Clements is an artist and member of Pax Christi , New South Wales. This is the first part of his article. The second will be printed in the next issue.

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he year 2015 will mark a significant centenary in Australian history and lots of people on committees are engaged, no doubt, in the work of shaping the way Australians should remember and honour the men who went ashore at Gallipoli on April 25 in 1915. That was the beginning of our participation in the First World War. There have even been voices raised in favour of making Anzac Day our National Day, replacing January 26. That would be an amazing first, if it got legs, in that an entire gender would go missing; there were no women at the landing at Anzac Cove. The arguments for Anzac Day as the national day are based on the mateship that was forged in battle and extended through the nation as a result of shared loss. There is also an uneasiness with January 26 in that it marks the invasion of an ancient people. Somehow the epic voyage of the First Fleet does not grab the Australian imagination in the same way as Anzac Day. The First Fleet brought death, destruction and diminishment to Aboriginal people and culture but, like everything real, it isn’t without contradiction and therefore possibilities for the men and women, convict and free on the ships, for Aboriginal people and, over time, for peoples across the region and the world. With the First Fleet came the beginnings, not without failures, of agriculture - wheat, corn, barley, rice, vast numbers of plants, hundreds of bushels of vegetable seeds, plant cuttings and fruit trees, among them grapevine, fig,

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orange, pear and apple; as well as tools and implements. Inevitably, the defeat at Gallipoli has shaped the national story. It was, however, but the prelude to the Western Front, where the world saw, for the first time, what has become commonplace; the use of violence on a mass scale, violence directed not only by the armies at each other but also, incidentally, against farmers and agriculture. The connections between battlefields and agriculture are not always uppermost in the mind; yet the lives and routines of farmers are always victims of war. The breakdown of rural and provincial France began with the First World War - ruined villages and agriculture, apocalyptic landscapes, refugees and the desolation of families, a legacy of hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans, lost to our understanding and left out of our accounts. From 1914-1918, the war against farmers, the land and nature got a big shove; the relationship between cultivation and culture finally broke down. In Australia markets dried up, supplies were difficult to come by and the labour force was gone. “... the Bush provided a higher proportion of recruits than the cities but that inevitably meant that a large number of men from rural areas were killed.” (Waterhouse) Every local council was a recruiting agency, a tool of the dominant class. "The combatants in the First World War” were “the greatest and wealthiest nations on the earth." (Benedict XV) They were the empires of the day - half a dozen of them, all founded and based on privilege - and they fought for control of colonies and peoples. Freedom and human rights were of no account. www.paxchristi.org.au

Since then, over the decades, the narrative of the First World War has been hijacked by cultural elites and distorted by nationalism. Thus there are questions that never seem to be asked and stories that never seem to be told by the chroniclers. So I’ll ask a few questions and tell a few stories, myself. Did the anticonscription campaigns and outcomes save Australia from an even greater disaster? Did the famous Australian indifference to religious authority deepen as a result of the churches' hypocritical toadying to the state? The poet, John Shaw Neilson (in Clark), having observed the local clergyman urging his flock to volunteer but not doing so himself, thought so, and advised his brother not to enlist. What role did the dominant cultural elites and class play in Australian recruiting campaigns among the working class? For the British, “the conflict...deepened the huge trench that had existed between the ruling and working classes since the days of the Norman feudal system.” A majority of the British soldiers didn’t have the vote and wouldn’t get it until 1918, when women over 30 also got the nod. “Britain was jerked into democracy by the horrendous discontinuity of the First World War.” (Evans) There must be a dollar in war histories: we write lots - strategy, generals, tactics - as though it might still be possible to revoke a decision, not go over the top, not give that order. We never seem to get tired of these histories, a bit like our sporting obsessions. In a recent biography of Les Darcy, the Australian middleweight champion of that time, there’s a moving anecdote in Pax Christi Australia

a description of the battle for The Nek at Gallipoli: “The third main wave of Australians was preparing to go in. Now from the Turkish lines, came a strange... pleading... call. ‘Dur! Dur! Dur!’ (Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! Do not keep running into our guns, slaughtering yourselves.) (Fitzsimons) At the final count, Australia lost half the eligible male population - 61,000 dead and 155,000 wounded, the latter a conservative figure; out of a population of 4.8 million, all volunteers, and, for the most part, Protestant Christians; 80 per cent of them unmarried. All the songwriters died and that’s why there are no love songs from that generation of Australians. Given the life expectancy of a few weeks on the Western Front, I wouldn’t be writing this if my dad had enlisted. I’m grateful he didn’t. If we had had conscription as all other participating nations did (the British raised the age to 51 in April 1918!) Australia would have lost an entire generation, among them the men who remained and worked the land; and we would have been left in no position to counter the Japanese when this country came under attack in 1942. We were lucky. Had it not been for those referenda on conscription, not only would we have lost that generation, but the birth rate would have dropped and, given the White Australia policy, we would have been an ageing population somewhat sooner than now. We have to be grateful for some things; so thank you, Billy Hughes, for being a democrat and honouring your promise to consult the people, by holding those referenda. I really enjoyed that reconciliatory conversation you had with Archbishop Daniel Mannix, a major figure in the war-time anticonscription campaign, long after the war. We should put up a memorial in Melbourne honouring all those who didn’t go; with Archbishop Mannix and Prime Minister Hughes shaking hands, a Celtic moment. (Mannix was Irish and Hughes was Welsh!) Our neighbours, the Kiwis, weren’t so lucky. There were no referenda for

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them, bound, outside the trenches, in the open, under fire. (Baxter) World War One was fought across some of the richest farming land in Northern France. The Marne was a major producer of wheat, sugar beet and mutton, and was famous for champagne. The Somme grew cereals and root crops. As a result of the pre-war arms race that had produced millions of shells, the wartime winters saw the land become an ocean of grey, glutinous mud in which 10 millions of human beings and uncounted animals died together. Leaving aside farm animals - cattle, sheep, goats and pigs - a vast number of horses brought from everywhere for transport perished. All the infrastructure road networks in place since Roman times, irrigation and canal systems, villages and towns with their market places, town halls and churches, built over the centuries by generations was destroyed. (Hamilton) For the Australians who arrived in Marseilles from Gallipoli via Egypt in 1916, the sight of French villages and the southern French landscape was a delight. Many of the Australians had grown up in the bush (we all had rural ancestors once upon a time) and so they were naturally interested in and related to the world of villages and farms, amazed at the productivity and the construction of the farm buildings, nothing like the shearing sheds back home. As they travelled north to the shockingly vulnerable battlefields of Fromelles, they would have seen, for the first (and, thousands, for the last,) time, mediaeval Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals rising out of landscapes, literally out of fields of wheat, a world of the imagination in stone and glass. Back in Australia, religious imagery had been confined to churches. In France, despite the revolution, images were everywhere; the Virgin in shrines, in and on churches; and the roadside shrines with their crucifixes in the villages and marking cross-roads, where they had guided travellers and pilgrims since mediaeval times. Traditionally, they were found at the entrance to a village or at the limit of the parish,

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serving as protection against the unexpected and the unknown. They had also been erected to commemorate an event or to expiate a murder. They were an exclusively rural phenomenon and there is something appropriate about that as the Gospels are full of imagery drawn from agriculture and harvests and the never-ending need for labourers. In France, faith and agriculture were linked and had been for centuries. Shelling commenced. These were the days of long and casual bombardments. Labourers were hoeing in the mangold fields. Stooping men and women watched us pass, without ceasing their work... Their old faces were inscrutable. They tilled the fields on the edge of the flames under the arching trajectory of shells. Bees hummed in the clear and drowsy sunshine. There was little smoke about the cottages where the creepers were green… We battalions came to the four crossroads where there were trenches in the corn, by a crucifix of wood in a damaged, brick shrine… Late in the afternoon we were ordered forward. From his crucifix the Man of Sorrows watched our going. (Jimmy Downing in Carlyon) So the strange contradiction came about that the war was fought in the midst of Catholic religious imagery. For the English and Australian soldiers, the sight of the shrines, with images that had been banished from Protestant Christianity since the Reformation, made a big impression. Nothing like that back in Wolverhampton or Wagga Wagga! The English soldiers, a million of whom would die, were so impressed and consoled by these images that a spontaneous and popular movement, now little known and even less remembered, started in England. The first roadside shrine was built in South Hackney in London in 1916. With the support of the London Evening News, Selfridges’ department store and wartime evangelism, they soon spread across the country, predating parish and civic war memorials. (The War Shrine Movement)

Continued in December DT

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Ukraine: there's no way out unless the west understands its past mistakes The Hon Malcolm Fraser This article appeared in the “Guardian Australia” in March 2014 and is reproduced with permission.

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estern leaders mostly paint the whole dispute as totally one-sided: it is all Russia’s fault. But the Crimea crisis is directly related to the misguided steps taken after the Soviet Union’s fall After the fall of the Soviet Union, many hoped the cold war ideology could be put behind, and that the powers could work for a more cooperative and a better world. NATO had done its job. There were many ways in which the former members of the Soviet Union in eastern Europe could have been given security for the future. NATO chose to provide that security by moving eastward to the borders of Russia. The then president, Gorbachev, in negotiating with secretary of state, James Baker, had insisted that NATO should not move one foot east – this was an area of traditional Russian influence. President Clinton pushed to expand NATO to the very borders of Russia. There was talk of Ukraine and Georgia being included. The Move East, despite the negotiations held with Gorbachev, was provocative, unwise and a very clear signal to Russia: we are not willing to make you a co-operative partner in the management of European or world affairs; we will exercise the power available to us and you will have to put up with it. The message was re-emphasised years later, when President Bush sought to place elements of the anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic. America said this was aimed at Iran. Russia would not have believed that. The west was acting as though the cold war still persisted. What happened a while ago in Georgia, and what is happening in the Crimea grows directly from those early mistakes made by the west. The west

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has been angling over the years to draw Ukraine into NATO. It has been doing whatever it could to support a pro-European government in the Ukraine, and to oppose or to bring down a pro-Russian government. In January, Seumas Milne described those fighting against then the then government as far right nationalists and fascists. If but a small part of what he then said was correct, the West has once again chosen some unsavoury partners and that does not augur well for the future. Milne then described the elements then fighting the government as pro-fascist, pronazi, anti-Jew. The West has again been flat-footed and unprepared. There is a significant Russia minority in Ukraine; Russia would be bound to take steps to protect that minority. In addition, if Putin thought that the west was angling to get the Ukraine into NATO, he certainly would have taken steps as he has to guarantee access to the Black Sea ports in Crimea and to safeguard military establishments which could be used to threaten that access. To protect assets in Crimea will always be a Russian objective. Western leaders and western media mostly paint the whole dispute as totally onesided: it is all Russia’s fault, and Putin is preventing a true democracy emerging. The steps taken in the early days after the fall of the Soviet Union, the breach of what Gorbachev (I accept almost certainly mistakenly) believed to be a firm agreement that NATO would not move east, was bound to create difficulties for the future. There will be no way out of this, unless the history and the West’s past mistakes are understood by those who are trying to grapple with the present intractable, difficult and extraordinarily dangerous problem. There is another aspect of this which should give western powers even greater concern for the future. The US has embarked on what many regard as a foolish and dangerous policy in the www.paxchristi.org.au

western pacific: a policy of containment of China. Even Joseph Nye, a former Pentagon official, has said that containment is the wrong approach to a rising China – the US policy should be one of co-operation. There have been discussions about possible strategic arrangements between China and Russia. Are the mistaken policies of the US and the unfolding drama in Ukraine going to push both Russia and China towards a strategic partnership? Those who thought the cold war was over and hoped for a better world are being proved to be wrong. Those in charge of current policy are showing an inadequate understanding of the events unfolding before their eyes, and an inability to work cooperatively to guide the world more safely. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is pursuing an increasingly repressive course and has now assumed dictatorial powers. He has also concluded an understanding with Russia that surrenders Ukraine’s economic independence and threatens its political independence. His actions could lead to turmoil and perhaps revolt in Ukraine, an indefinite postponement of any return in Ukraine and perhaps Russia to democracy, a shift in the balance of power in Europe, and a period of enmity between the West and Russia. Since President Yanukovych assumed power in 2010, he has pursued two principal goals — to enrich himself and his family and to ensure by fair means or foul his victory in the presidential election in March 2015. He has certainly has achieved the first goal. There are reasons to believe that the amounts his and his family have robbed run into the billions of dollars. In order to achieve his second goal, that of re-election in spite of poll ratings in the mid-teens, he has pursued an increasing oppressive course. He has done away with the rule of law.

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He and his allies controls most of the media. He has harassed the opposition, fixed elections and dominated parliament by bribes and blackmail. Faced with the present unrest, on the basis of a dubious vote in parliament, he has acquired dictatorial powers. His security forces can act with impunity; he can ban independent demonstrations; criticism, whether justified or not, can be treated as criminal defamation; the immunity of parliamentarians can be revoked; opposition activities can be criminalized as extremist; organizations supporting them can be banned. Yanukovych’s Ministry of Culture has already followed in Stalin’s footsteps by threatening to outlaw the Greek Catholic Church. The Internet is to be controlled; telephone conversations to be overheard, and NGOs receiving outside money are to be treated as foreign agents. Faced with the danger of currency collapse and sovereign default because of his economic misrule, President Yanukovych has rejected agreements with the EU and the IMF because of their conditions of democracy and a free economy. Instead he

has turned to Russia, which has provided short-term credit and reductions in the price of gas, conditional on good behaviour. Russian and Ukrainian security and police forces are to co-operate closely. Vast sectors of the Ukrainian economy are to come under joint control. Ukrainian customs regulations are to be aligned with those of Russia’s Customs Union. Free trade agreements with anyone else will require Russian approval. The Russian presence in Crimea, a territory claimed by Russian nationalists and where Russia has military installations, is to be increased. Russia’s goal is to have Ukraine join the Eurasian Customs Union to be formed next year out of the Customs Union, with, Russia hopes, some sovereign powers. Russia has in the past spoken of the bloc having a joint foreign and economic policy towards the outside world. Russia would like to see Ukraine also join its Collective Security Organization. Should Russia succeed in its goals, several things might happen: Ukraine would likely remain in turmoil and revolt; the return of Ukraine and

probably Russia to democracy would be delayed. The shift in the balance of power in Europe could be destabilizing in the Baltic, Central Europe and the Balkans. Understandings between Russia and the West could become more difficult. Western consciences would be provoked by oppression in Ukraine. Westerners could be filled with enmity towards Russia in case of a growth in Russian power. It is important for Canada to remain engaged in Ukraine. Canada should continue its condemnation of human rights violations by the Yanukovych administration. Canada might follow the United States lead in imposing targeted sanctions against persons suspected of human rights violations. Canada should continue to encourage exchanges with Ukraine. It should offer sympathetic treatment of political refugees. Canada should maintain its aid policy in spite of increasingly difficult circumstances, so as to support the civil society, and those Ukrainians fighting for their democratic rights. The Hon Malcolm Fraser is a former Prime Minister of Australia

2014 Japanese Citizens’ Peace Declaration August 6, 2014

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n August 15, 1945, Japan officially surrendered to the Allied nations following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, which indiscriminately killed over 210 thousand people, mostly civilians, including 40 thousand Koreans. The US proudly claimed this a “victory of freedom and democracy” against Japanese militarism and fascism. At the same time, President Truman justified this genocide with the ironic excuse that it was “to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians,” and to end the long-lasting bloody war in the AsiaPacific. In this way the US created a myth so as to evade responsibility for its grave war crime. On August 10, 1945, the Japanese government denounced the atrocity of using a nuclear weapon as a serious war crime. It was, however, the first and only protest that the Japanese government ever issued regarding the atomic bombing, and was not supported by any other nation. Thus, the justification of the use of nuclear weapons as an effective means to achieve a “victory of freedom and democracy” was

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widely accepted. As a consequence, the opportunity to thoroughly examine the criminality of nuclear weapons was lost. In other words, the opportunity to expose the fact that the American motto “justice is power” had been reversed to mean “power (i.e. nuclear weapons) is justice” had been lost. This is the reason that the truly criminal nature of nuclear weapons has still not been clearly addressed, thereby preventing universal knowledge and recognition of this fact. The use of nuclear weapons in any form is a crime against humanity, and the possession of nuclear weapons or nuclear deterrents is a crime against peace, because it is preparation for committing a crime against humanity. Failure to examine the criminality of the atomic bombing also led the Japanese government to deny the plight of A-bomb survivors. Even today, 69 years after the atomic bombing, many A-bomb survivors are still fighting court cases to gain official government recognition as victims who require proper health care services. At the

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same time, these sufferers are exploited politically and are seen as symbolic “victims of nuclear weapons.” This is the attitude of conservative politicians and scholars patronized by the government, who simply repeat the slogan “ultimate abolition of nuclear weapons” without questioning the criminality of these weapons. Omission to examine the criminality of the atomic bombing had other implications as well. It led the Japanese government to grossly underestimate the effects of radiation on people and the environment; to introduce and expand the use of nuclear energy for the purpose of maintaining the capability of producing nuclear weapons; and ultimately it led to the disastrous nuclear power accident in Fukushima three years ago, which exposed so many people to high levels of radiation. There were other ramifications too. On August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito stated in his Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War that his government had decided to surrender because of the inhumane atomic bombs. By singling out the atomic bombPax Christi Australia

ings as the decisive factor in the decision to surrender, Hirohito was able to completely ignore the war crimes committed by the Japanese military across Asia and the Pacific, as well as the anti-Japanese resistance that was taking place throughout Asia. In addition, he exploited the A-bomb damage to indirectly justify the war as a “war to liberate Asia.” In this way, the atomic bombings became a means to conceal not only the war responsibility of the emperor himself and other wartime leaders, but also the responsibility of the Japanese people for a war in the name of the Japanese empire that took tens of millions of lives throughout the Asia-Pacific. Just as President Truman fabricated a myth to cover up the US government’s responsibility for its grave war crimes, so too did the Japanese government use the same A-Bomb attacks to conceal its war responsibilities. Japan’s refusal to openly recognize the criminality of the many brutal acts it committed against other Asian peoples and its responsibility for those actions means that it has been denied the right to expose the illegality of

similar crimes that the US perpetrated against Japanese people. This is the reason why Japan has willingly subordinated itself to US military control, although it has never been trusted by neighboring Asian nations, and cannot establish a peaceful relationship with them. Indeed, it can be said that the current depressing political and social situation in Japan is closely related to the failure to carefully examine both the US responsibility for the indiscriminate mass killing caused by the atomic bombings and Japan’s responsibility for war crimes it committed against people throughout the Asia-Pacific. In particular, a recent series of undemocratic and anti-human rights policies that Abe Shinzo’s government has been introducing are a clear manifestation of problems that stem from this failure which have accumulated over the past 69 years. These are: the enactment of the Secret Information Protection Act; cabinet’s approval to exercise the right to collective selfdefense; the virtual disapproval of the Kono Statement on comfort women, as well as the Murayama Statement on Japan’s war of aggression; and

The plan to resume nuclear power plant operations. Clearly, in order to achieve a longterm prospect for peace and wellbeing for our nation and its people, it is necessary to re-examine our history over the last 69 years from the perspective of the above-mentioned war responsibilities. Based on that exercise, we then need to destroy the myth of the value of nuclear power and nuclear deterrence, so as to establish a strong, anti-war solidarity between the citizens of Japan and our neighboring countries. The late Ishibashi Tanzan, one of a few truly admirable Japanese politicians, once stated “the best strategy for peace is to create harmony among the people.” The fraudulent policies Abe is now promoting all run against this philosophy, and are destroying harmonious relationships between people, both domestically and internationally. To transform this deadlocked situation, we must begin by overthrowing the Abe regime as quickly as possible. Coordinator and Author: Professor Yuki Tanaka, Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City University

Better Than Hatred, A Bereaved Father’s Call for Peace Izzeldin Abuelaish July 24, 2014

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was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp. As a child I never tasted childhood. I was born to face misery, suffering, abject poverty, and deprivation. However, the suffering in this world is man-made; it’s not from God. God wants every good thing for us and he created us for the good. But just because suffering is manmade, there is hope. It’s the hope that we can challenge this man-made suffering by not accepting it, and by taking responsibility. I can’t challenge God, but I can challenge someone on earth. And you can do the same. People can deprive you, imprison you, or kill you, but no one can prevent any of us from dreaming. As a child, I dreamed of being a medical doctor. Through hard work I achieved my dream. Now I fight on a daily basis to

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give life to others. There are others who live to fight. Is this the purpose of our existence: to fight and to end others’ lives? A human life is the most precious thing in the universe. I know from my practice as a gynaecologist how hard we work to save one life. Someone else can put an end to a life in seconds with a bullet. Each human being is a representative of God on earth, God’s most holy creation. We must value human life and be strong advocates of saving human life. This world is endemic with violence, fear, and injustice. We often mention that one hundred, one thousand, or ten thousand people have been killed here or there. But people are not numbers or statistics: we need to zoom in to think of each of them as a beloved one. Each person who is killed has a name, a face,

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a family, a story. I was the first Palestinian doctor to practice medicine in an Israeli hospital Many Israelis see Palestinians only as workers and servants. I wanted them to see that Palestinians are human and that we are not so different. Medicine has one culture and one value: the value of saving humanity. Within the walls of a hospital we treat patients equally, with respect and privacy, wishing them to be healed. We don’t design treatment according to their name, religion, ethnicity, or background but according to their disease and their suffering. Why don’t we practice this equality outside of these institutions? Inside them we are angels and we remember that we are equal. We need to practice it outside. The happiest moment in my life is when I hand a baby to its mother;

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the cry of a newborn is the cry of hope that a new life has come to this world. There is no difference between the cry of a newborn baby of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Druze, or Bedouin parents. They are the same. The most difficult time in my life was one four month period while I was working at this Israeli hospital. On September 16, 2008, I lost my wife, Nadia, to acute leukaemia. It was sudden, taking only two weeks. I felt it was the end of the world. I believe that a mother is everything in life. The mother is the main pillar of the house; she is the one who gives, sacrifices, and builds without limits. In the loss of a mother, we lost her big heart, kindness, mercy, and love. But I couldn’t change it; I had to move with it. I was blessed to have six beautiful, bright daughters and two sons. I continued my work. Then the unexpected happened. On January 16, 2009, just four months after the loss of my wife, an Israeli tank bombed my home in Gaza, killing three of my daughters and one niece. There was no reason to kill them. They were girls armed only with love, education, and plans. I raised them to serve humanity. They were drowning in their blood in their bedroom, their bodies spread everywhere. I wanted to see them. Where was Bessan, whom I saw a few seconds before? Where were Mayar, Aya, and Noor? Mayar was number one in math in Palestine and planned to follow my path and become a medical doctor. She was decapitated. I couldn’t recognize her. Where was Aya, 13, who planned to be a lawyer, the voice of the voiceless, to speak out and break the silence? Where was Noor, 17, who planned to be a teacher? At that moment I said that God sees this tragedy, and it will be invested for the good. I asked myself why I had been saved; if I had stayed a few more seconds with them, I would have been gone. It was God’s mercy and plan that I was scheduled to be interviewed live on Israeli TV. My cries were heard through the world. Even when the whole world seems dormant and paralysed, God is awake. God is alive. At that moment I di-

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rected my face to God, the one who is alive, awake, and strong. I didn’t feel angry. I only felt that I couldn’t accept what was happening and asked what I could do. At that moment I swore to God and to my daughters: I will never rest. I will never relax. I will never give up or forget you. How can I forget them? They are my beloved ones and I miss them. I believe I will meet my daughters again, and they will ask me, “What did you do for us?” Until then they are alive in me, and I will meet them with a big gift, and that gift is justice for them and for others. I must prove that their lives and noble blood were not wasted. That they made a difference in others’ lives. That they saved others. But to do that, we can’t use bullets and bombs like the one which killed them. The bullet is the weapon of the weak: it kills once. You have the strongest weapon. It’s your wisdom and your kind, courageous words. Words are stronger than bullets. We need to say the right word in time. What is the value of saying it afterward? What is the value of treating patients after they have died? The first message of support came from my fourteen-year-old son, Mohammed. While I was crying he looked at me and said, “Why are you crying? Why are you screaming? You must be happy.” I said that he didn’t know his sisters had been killed. How can he tell me to be happy? He said, “No, I know my sisters are killed, but I know that they are happy there. They are with their mom. She asked for them.” That fourteen-year-old Palestinian child could teach world leaders to be patient. I thought that if he said that, I don’t need to worry about him. He knows his way. And I too have to move forward. As Einstein said, life is like riding a bicycle. To keep balanced we must keep moving. I kept moving faster, stronger, more determined. Not looking backward, only forward. I wrote my book I Shall not Hate because people expected me to hate. Maybe I have the right to hate. But we are blessed to be human, to have choices in life between the dark and the light, between what is right and

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what is wrong. If I want to bring my daughters justice, is it with hatred? Is it with darkness, with blindness? Hatred is a disease that eats the one who carries it. It is poison. It is a fire which burns the one who started it. It is cancer, a self-destructive disease. It’s a heavy burden with which you can’t move forward. It makes you sink deeper. Don’t allow this disease. Build a shield around you. Don’t allow hatred. I said that I shall not hate, meaning that I’m not going to be sick. I will never be broken or defeated by this disease. I will challenge it and take responsibility. Don’t blame others, but take responsibility and move forward. Be angry, but in a positive way. When you see something wrong, don’t accept it. Ask, “What can I do to change it?” Don’t feel so angry that you lose control and then regret it. We need a constructive, positive anger that energizes us. Whatever you do makes a difference. Don’t say it won’t impact others. The patient needs action, a prescription. They don’t need words. Everything starts with words, but these words have no meaning if they are not translated into action. It starts with small actions. First make a difference in your local community. Speak out. Evil flourishes in this world when good people do nothing and think they are far from risk. What do you hear? What do you see? Does it harm human beings? This world is becoming smaller and smaller. We live in one boat. We must not allow anyone to do harm to this boat or we will all sink. Your freedom depends on mine. No one is free as long as others are not. We must stand for the freedom of all. We must speak out about the freedom of all – freedom from need, ignorance, poverty, sickness, and fear. In memory of Bessan, Mayar, Aya, and Noor, I established the Daughters for Life Foundation for the education of girls and women from the Middle East. Social and economic challenges should not be a barrier to girls’ education. In these girls I see my daughters’ dreams and plans being fulfilled. I see these girls as my daughters. God took three daughters and one niece from me, but has given me hundreds more. Plough Publishing House with permission

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The Way To Stop The Islamic State Is A United, Free Kurdistan Just What The US Does Not Want John Rees Western calls to arm the Kurds and bomb Iraq are both hypocritical and dangerous, argues John Rees August 17, 2014

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he Kurdish struggle for national liberation is one of the longest in the Middle East. The 30 million Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a state. At the end of First World War the major powers divided the Kurdish areas between four nations: Turkey, where most Kurds live, Syria, Iraq and Iran. US President Woodrow Wilson promised there would be an independent Kurdish state within four years. But the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) which created the states of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, among others, brokered by the League of Nations, gave the British control of Iraq and its oil. This left the historic Kurdish territory divided among Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran (formerly the Persian Empire, which had been occupied by the British during the war). The Kurds were abandoned by the US and the other great powers. It was the first of many broken promises. But the Kurds fought on against oppression in all of the states among which their people were divided. Great power hypocrisy is just as evident today as it was after the First World War. While the US and the European Union arm the Kurds in Iraq, the very same US, European Union and NATO forces declare the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) to be a terrorist organisation. The PKK is banned as a terrorist organisation in the UK. In the PKK’s long armed struggle against the Turkish state it has seen many thousands of its members killed, imprisoned and tortured. To this day, and despite a current ceasefire, the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan remains in a Turkish prison. The main powers strategy for most of the 20th century was to keep the Kurds divided among the four nations where they lived and allow the local states to

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go ahead in suppressing them. This was the policy of Turkey, whether under the military or Erdogan, of Syria under the Assads, both father and son, and in Iran under the Shah and the Islamic State. Iraq under Saddam carried out brutal repression of the Kurds. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003 it saw a chance to use the Kurds’ opposition to Saddam for its own purposes. First it used them ideologically, highlighting their oppression and in particular the Halabja massacre of the Kurds in 1988 - although at the time the US backed up Saddam’s attempt to blame Iran for the attack. Then they used the Kurdish areas as a base for the invasion. Then by granting the Kurds effective autonomy they made them part of the divide and rule strategy which led directly to the sectarian structure of the occupied Iraqi state. It is this, in turn, which has given the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) the chance to grow out of the alienation of Sunni Muslims in the US constructed Iraqi state. Thus, as we have argued elsewhere, the current threat from IS is a direct product of US policy in Iraq. The US prefer the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq now because they want to use it against the threat of IS. But they also prefer a weak and divided Kurdish nation to a united and free Kurdistan. Iraqi Kurdistan is oil rich, dominated by US oil companies. It is also supplying oil to Turkey (while it oppresses fellow Kurds) and to Israel. The US business magazine Forbes gloated: ‘the fact that the Kurds were willing to deal with Israel implies that they intend to pursue a more magnanimous foreign policy than their Arab neighbours, which maintain a boycott of crude sales to Israel’. This is why Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come out in favour of independence for Iraqi Kurds but remains resolutely opposed to full independence for Kurdistan as www.paxchristi.org.au

a whole. Israel hopes for a divided and weakened Iraq, and must be hoping the same might happen in Iran if the momentum for Kurdish independence carries across the border. The fact that the US, Turkey and Israel are playing their own game with the Kurds does not for a moment cancel out the Kurds fight for independence. But it does mean that if that struggle is not to be diverted into (and limited to) a pro-imperial rump statelet in northern Iraq then the full demand for a unified and independent Kurdistan must be in the foreground of Kurdish agitation. The Iraqi Kurdish leadership has done too many deals with too many reactionary forces to be trusted. In the past it has even supported Turkish military operations against the PKK. Even now, when there is a degree of unity among Kurds in the face of the threat from IS, one analyst says of the supply of arms ‘Perhaps something would end up with the PKK, but [does Barzani, the leader of the Iraqi Kurds] really want that to happen? I don't think so’. Iraqi Kurdish forces are not even the ones that are most effectively fighting against IS or rescuing the Yazidis from the Singar mountains. That is being done by PKK forces from Turkey and their allies from Syria. As one Kurdish source says: ‘Barzani and his security apparatus failed to realise that the forces of the IS have the same genocidal roots as the people who committed Anfal in the late ‘80s, when 182,000 Kurdish villagers, many of them women and children, were murdered. US officials have reported that Sinjar was poorly defended and the peshmarga withdrew without a fight. Yazidi Kurds will never forgive KDP leaders for this historical blunder and they will take years to recover from their terrible wounds’. This kind of co-option by the major powers is not new. Marx and Engels were highly critical of small nationalist movements drawn into the role of Pax Christi Australia

happened to sections of the Irish republican movement both in the 1920s and the 1970s. It happened to the Kosovo Liberation Army, which became NATO’s ground forces in the Balkan War. And it happened again to Libyan opposition forces under the NATO air war in 2011 and to the Free Syrian Army, with disastrous consequences in both cases. And it has long been an overt part of neo-con strategy to use elements of a popular movement to obtain the removal of regimes the West dislikes. But it is not inevitable, even in world where the forces of socialism and popular national liberation are weaker than they were a generation ago. An independent Kurdistan across the whole of the territory would be the one development that could stop IS in its tracks and marginalise the Iraqi Kurdish leadership. The post First World War settlement is breaking down, but it is breaking down in favour of reactionary forces. A unified and free Kurdistan would offer the beacon of a national liberation struggle that had a popular and progressive outcome. It would, in the current situation in the Middle East, have the effect that the ANC’s victory

over apartheid had in southern Africa. It would set up a pole of political attraction and a liberated territory which would be impenetrable to IS and much more difficult for the imperial powers to co-opt and exploit - which is exactly why they don’t want it. The demand for a fully independent and unified Kurdistan, combined with the demand that Saudis, Qataris and Turks stop funding and otherwise aiding IS, can re-write the direction of events. The Kurds have a long and heroic record of anti-imperialism. Some of the Iraqi Kurdish leaders are selling that legacy short. But the Kurds cannot profit at the expense of other Kurds or the Palestinians. The best defence against IS is not US weapons or a proWestern oil policy. Some Kurds will say ‘but what should we do about the IS onslaught now?’ And the pro-war hawks are already writing off the history of previous disastrous interventions with the cry ‘but this is different, we can’t let the Kurds fight alone’. We now know from past experience that the panic call ‘something must be done because nothing could be worse . than this’ run very hollow in the long

run. We were told that nothing could be worse than Saddam, he is murdering his own people’ But war and occupation added to the death and suffering. We were told in Libya 'Benghazi will fall, nothing could be worse'. But what happened then was worse: 30,000 dead and the country reduced to a disaster zone from which arms flow around the region. Our reply should be ‘Yes, of course the Kurds have the right to armed selfdefence, but getting into an agreement with the US which will also mean a US bombing campaign will increase death and destruction. It will also increase the weight of all the reactionary forces among the Kurds’. The best defence now is to step up the call for a unified Kurdistan and exploit the divisions among the NATO powers. This is also the best way in the long run to stop IS. John Rees is a writer, broadcaster activist, and is one of the organisers of the People’s Assembly. His books include ‘The Algebra of Revolution’, ‘Imperialism and Resistance’, ‘‘The People Demand, A Short History of the Arab Revolutions’ He is cofounder of the Stop the War Coalition Published in “Analysis .”

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ohn Curtin, Vida Goldstein and Daniel Mannix were the voices of workers, women and the Irish in the antiwar and anti-conscription campaigns of World War I and saved a generation of Australians from the battlefields of the Western Front. Of the fifty participating nations, Australia was the only one without conscription. The anti-conscription campaign was the first major post-Federation civil liberties struggle in Australian history. Curtin, Goldstein and Mannix were the stars and their heirs today are those voices raised on behalf of the thousands of children, women and men deprived of liberty in Australian detention centres, victims of the same political indifference that sent young men to their deaths in France. Bill Clements 29 June 2014 Disarming Times Page 10

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Pax Christi Member Honoured Dr Helen Hill, member of Pax Christi Victoria committee, and long time activist and scholar has been awarded the Collar of the Order of Timor-Leste. Among many achievements Helen helped found the Australia East Timor Association. In 1984, she organized an event in "National Press Club" in Canberra, where Ramos Horta spoke for the first time after the Indonesian invasion. In 1997, she was part of the Victoria, University team that organized the conference on "Strategic Planning for Development of East Timor at the request of the CNRT . Her thesis, "Signs of nationalism in East Timor: FRETILIN 19741978,” was published in 2002. She has always been active on Timor-Leste, conducting activities in Australia in solidarity with the Timorese people. has worked on several projects, including community development programs at the National University of Timor-Leste (UNTL), organized two study visits to the University of Victoria in Melbourne, for scholars of East Timor and managers of higher education. Helen was instrumental in organizing the Pax Christi Timor Leste student project and is now assisting the Timor Leste Vice Minister for University Education.

Congratulations Helen! ‘Gallipoli Centenary Peace Campaign: Sydney The Gallipoli Centenary Peace Campaign (GCPC) was formed in mid February 2014 as a result of a meeting between the Marrickville Peace Group, Marrickville Residents for Reconciliation. Pax Christi and the Marrickville Greens. We held a successful forum on 5 August on the topic ‘Anzac – Why does it last?’ We have gained the support of Marrickville Council to explore community support for establishing a local Peace and Reconciliation Park. We plan a community debate in April 2015 on ‘The Anzac legend, political agendas and legitimising war’. Our current projects include the following: (a) fostering a greater appreciation of dissenting voices during World War I, mainly in the Marrickville local government area, and (b) distributing a set of lesson plans and other resources to local secondary schools (Refer to the lesson plans entitled The Enduring Effects of War developed by MAPW Victoria,

Anzac Centenary Coalition Victoria Ms Georgia Murphy has begun work as our project worker. Georgia is a graduate in psychology from Monash University. She is currently studying International Aid and Development. She will be working two days a week until the end of February 2015 to facilitate the working of the Coalition. She is based at the Uniting Church Centre 130 Little Collins St. We are grateful to the Uniting Church in Victoria/Tasmania and to Pax Christi for providing initial funding and support for the project. Following a successful Public Forum in April: “Who is Australia,? Who Might We Become?” at which the Keynote speaker was Professor Marilyn Lake co author, “What’s wrong with ANZAC?” the Coalition is planning four further forums in October 2014 and in March, August & October 2015. The next forum on October 20 will focus on the “Aboriginal Wars” with Professor Henry Reynolds as keynote speaker. Plans are advancing for a series of leaflets on aspects of the alternative narrative.

Rethinking The Future Lecture Series presented by Emeritus Prof Joseph Camilleri OAM Tuesdays in October, 6pm-8pm, St Michael’s Hall, 120 Collins Street, Melbourne. • • •

What social forces, ideas and movements are shaping our future? Are we seeing the beginnings of a new Cold War? Is there an end in sight to the violence raging in the Middle East and surrounding regions? How is Australia responding to the major challenges confronting the early . 21st century?

Programme: 7 October: The United States, Russia and China: The Prospect of a New Cold War. 14 October: Coping with Risk and Uncertainty: Volatile Markets, Anxious States and Tentative Social Movements. 21 October: The Middle East: Holy Land or Crucible of Conflict? 28 October: Australia Adrift: Navigating New Pathways Tickets: $15 per lecture or $50 series pass Disarming Times Page 11

Bookings: www.stmichaels.org.au www.paxchristi.org.au

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NOTICE NOTICE BOARD BOARD NEW SOUTH WALES Pax Christi Meetings We normally meet on the First Monday of each month at 6.00pm for shared meal that members bring and the meeting follows at 6.30 pm. Contact: Claude Mostowik (02) 9550 3845 or 0411 450 953 The venue: MSC Justice and Peace Centre, 15A Swanson Street, Erskineville. 2 minutes walk

QUEENSLAND Pax Christi Meetings Pax Christi Queensland Branch meets monthly. Contact: Pancras Jordan OP 0415 461 620 [email protected] Clare Cooke SSpS [email protected] Anzac Centenary Coalition Victoria Public Forum ‘THE FORGOTTEN WAR”

Edmund Rice Centre invites you to: A Day On Action For Human Rights. Skills for Advocating and Educating for Change in an Unequal World. Keynote Speaker: Presenter: Dr Colm Regan, internaProfessor Henry Reynolds tionally renowned Irish human rights Supporting Speakers: Anna activist and educator. Clarke, Celeste Little, Claire Lord For: Advocacy Groups, Educators, 7.30 p.m. Monday 20 October Social Justice Coordinators and SenUnitarian Church, Grey St., ior Students Workshops in: Media Skills, LobbyEast Melbourne ing, Effective Letter Writing, TeachPROTEST ONE YEAR OF ing Human Rights : OPERATION SOVEREIGN BORDERS Thursday October 23 9.00am3.00pm Refugee Action Coalition Melbourne 2pm Saturday 11 October , $50 Students/Concession $20 Edmund Rice Centre, 15 Henley Rd, State Library, corner of Swanston and La Trobe Sts., Melbourne Homebush West : (02) 8762 4200 Registration & payment by Friday Refugee Action Coalition Sydney October 8, to Reception- Edmund Major Rally For Refugees Rice Centre, PO Box 2219 Home2pm Saturday 11 October bush West NSW 2140 Hyde Park North Email: [email protected]

VICTORIA Agapes and Public Forums A SPECIAL EVENING To introduce Pax Christi and reflect on the Challenges Ahead. Tuesday 16 September 6-9 p.m. Kildara Centre, rear 39 Stanhope St, Malvern. Distinguished Australians In Conversation Rev Merrill Ktchen OAM, D Theol, Former dean of Evangelical Theological Association Rev Brian Johnstone CSSR, STD, formerly of Pontifical Gregorian University Assoc Prof Tilman Ruff National President of MAPW & International Chair of ICAN

OCTOBER AGAPE Sunday 19 October 1 p.m. Shared Lunch Followed by conversation on A Muslim View of Peace & War St John’s Uniting Church Cnr Glenhuntly & Foster St Elsternwick AGM Sunday 16 November 1 p.m Kildara Centre, Stanhope St Malvern

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