Um holocausto irlandês

The Irish government has bowed to pressure to set up an official inquiry into deaths and abuse at homes for unmarried mothers after it found 4,000 infants had been buried in unmarked graves at institutions where morality rates ran as high as 50 per cent.

The inquiry was announced with anger growing over official inaction in the face of revelations that infants had been buried in a mass grave behind a convent-run mother and baby home in Tuam, County Galway where 796 children died over a 30-year period.

Enda Kenny, the prime minister, said unmarried mothers were treated as an “inferior sub-species” as he declared the investigation would revealed a shameful past. “This was Ireland of the '20s to the 60s - an Ireland that might be portrayed as a glorious and brilliant past, but in its shadows contained all of these personal cases, where people felt ashamed, felt different, were suppressed, dominated,” he said.

Charlie Flanagan, the childrens minister, said the inquiry would be charged with investigating burial practices, high mortality rates, forced adoptions and clinical trials of drugs on children in four suspect homes.

In addition to the home in Tuam, so-called “little angel” plots will be investigated at Sean Ross Abbey, Tipperary, Bessborough, Co Cork, and Castlepollard, Co Westmead.            

The Hollywood movie, Philomena, which tells the story of Philomena Lee and her lost son Michael was based on events at Sean Ross Abbey.
Infant mortality rates ranged from 30-50 per cent in some of the homes in the 1930s and 1940s.
“Tuam will not be looked at isolation,” Mr Flanagan said. “It’s time for sensitivity rather than sensationalism.
"We have to consider other issues relating to adoption and the legal circumstances surrounding adoption. There is (also) the issue of clinical trials."
No excavation has taken place yet at the site or bodies found.
The Catholic and Protestant churches that had any involvement with the homes, or links to religious orders which ran them, are to be asked to open all their records.
Health authorities were given files from many orders after the institutes closed.
Mr Flanagan said he would like the inquiry to be carried out in public even though documents which are private and personal would have to be examined.
“I’m seeking national consensus and I’m asking people to buy into this process so we at last get to the truth,” he added.
The move follows new research that shows 796 children, from newborns to a nine-year-old, died in a home run by the Bon Secours order of nuns in Tuam between 1925 and 1961.
Historian Catherine Corless, who made the discovery, says death records from the home show the children died from malnutrition and infectious diseases, such as TB and measles.
There are no burial records for the children, leading many to believe a mass grave in a disused septic tank discovered in 1975 near the home was the children's final resting place.
The issue of "Mother and Baby" homes gained wider attention thanks to last year's Oscar-nominated film "Philomena" starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan.
There were many such homes in 20th century Ireland, accommodating women who became pregnant outside of marriage and who were ostracised by the conservative Catholic society of the time.
Conditions were harsh in the homes, with high mortality rates. Most babies were taken from their mothers and adopted or fostered. The Telegraph

Timor-Leste: Cortes na liberdade de imprensa

JOURNALISTS and civil society critical of the flawed Fiji mediascape in the lead-up to the first post-coup general election in September should also be up in arms over the attempts to muzzle the press in Timor-Leste.

A new law passed by the National Assembly in Dili early last month raises the Asia-Pacific bar in suppression tactics against probing media.

The law, not yet endorsed by the president, severely limits who can qualify to be “journalists” and could potentially curb overseas investigative journalists and foreign correspondents from reporting from the country as they would need advance state permission.

It also sidelines independent freelancers and researchers working for non-government organisations in quasi media roles.

In a fledgling country where the media has limited resources, media officers and other researchers working for NGOs have been providing robust reporting and analysis of the country’s development progress – especially over the oil producing industry.

Critics describe the law, adopted in Parliament on May 6 in spite of a campaign of public condemnation, as one of the most restrictive in the world. The law has been featured by the latest edition of Index on Censorship.

The opening page of the La'o Hamutuk letter to the President.

One NGO, La’o Hamutuk, has been at the forefront of analysing this law and coordinated a letter to President Taur Matan Ruak, appealing for him to veto the law because it will “harm democracy and human rights”.

Investigative journalist and Tempo Semanal publisher José Belo says Timor-Leste will lose its freedom of speech.

The new Press Council mandated by Parliament will have the power to impose fines and jail on journalists breaching the law.

Declaring the law to be against the constitution, Belo says the law has been introduced by Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão’s government to “protect itself from media scrutiny and the scrutiny of the people”.

La’o Hamutuk (Timor-Leste Institute for Development Monitoring and Analysis) has monitored and critiqued the progress of the legislation since late last year and has provided a valuable media law resource page on its website.

At the weekend on its blog, it publicly released the letter to the President, which has been signed and endorsed by a number of international organisations – including the Pacific Media Centre in New Zealand, East Timor and Indonesian Action Network in the US and TAPOL in the UK - as well as local groups and individuals:

The La'o Hamutuk letter to the President:
PLEASE VETO MEDIA LAW

East Timorese youth undergoing journalism training sponsored by
the Independent Centre for Journalism. Image: DFAT/Global Voices

On 6 May, Timor-Leste's Parliament passed a law which would severely restrict Constitutional rights of freedom of speech and of the press. More than three weeks later, they have not yet sent the law to President Taur Matan Ruak, who will have 30 days to sign or veto the law when he receives it.

On 29 May, La'o Hamutuk and other organisations urged the President to veto the law, "because it will harm democracy and human rights, restrict many people's rights to freedom of expression, and give power to a single group to issue a few licenses while limiting other people's rights to share information. We believe this violates Timor-Leste’s Constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

Their letter is online in Tetum or English translation, as well as information and analysis. The following is abridged from the letter:

Your Excellency, Mr President, with our respect,

On 6 May 2014, National Parliament approved a Media Law, after nearly three months of work. La’o Hamutuk participated in a Parliamentary hearing on 19 February, where we explained that the draft law could damage freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

Investigative journalist José Belo says Timor-Leste
will lose its freedom of speech. Image David Robie/PMC

Since National Parliament has not repaired the basic flaw in this law, we would like to ask the President to use your powers to veto, as a symbolic and actual protection of democracy and the principles of independence. This Law will harm democracy and human rights, restrict many people’s freedom of expression, and give power to a single group to issue a few licenses while limiting other people’s rights to share information. We believe this violates Timor-Leste’s Constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Free expression is a principle of democracy.
Freedom of expression is a universal principle of democratic nations, and laws must not limit the rights of any person to receive and distribute information. This principle is guaranteed by Articles 40 and 41 of Timor-Leste’s Constitution and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Timor-Leste has ratified. Timor-Leste is legally obliged to follow them, and legislation must reflect their fundamental principles.

Article 2(a) of the proposed law defines “journalistic activities” as “seeking, collecting, selecting, analyzing and distributing information to the public, as text, words or images, through a media organ”, which Article 2(l) defines as “a person or corporation engaged in journalistic activity.” Article 2(i) says that a “journalist” is a professional whose principle activity is “journalism.” These self-referential definitions encompass a far broader range than commercial newspapers, radio and television stations.

In reality, many other people have a profession of distributing information, such as researchers, academics, civil society organisations, bloggers, freelance journalists and others. Therefore, this Article limits freedom to distribute information to professionals with credentials from the Press Council, which represents commercial media. In truth, the Press Council cannot limit people’s freedom of expression, as Articles 42, 43 and 44(b, c and d) in this Law would empower it to.

In addition, Article 12 cancels some people’s right to freedom of expression, rejecting the rights of anyone who is not an “adult citizen” to be a journalist.  This provision restricts students who want to cover news as well as student bloggers who publicize information. For example, students at Escola São Jose (Sanyos) write in Suara Timor-Lorosa’e, and coverage by students as Colegio Saó Miguel (CSM) is often on STL TV news. 

Not only “journalists” share information with the public.
Article 13.5 says that people who don't meet the law’s criteria cannot distribute information to the public. “Media organs” like www.aitaraklaran.blogspot.com, Buletin Fongtil, Buletin Haburas,  www.laohamutuk.org, www.haktl.org, www.timorhauniadoben.com , www.diakkalae.org , www.economia-tl.blogspot.com, Casa Producão Audiovisual (CPA) television programs, NGOs, World Bank and UN reports, Facebook writers and others have a fundamental right to distribute information to the public.

The law should protect the diversity of opinion.
A key function of the press is to circulate information and opinions from different perspectives, to help people understand various sides, rather than to give only one view.  Article 3.1(e)’s description of media’s function to “promote peace, social stability, harmony and national solidarity” could discourage dissemination of other points of view. Article 4(g)’s requirement that media “promote the public interest and democratic order” could be an excuse for repressing different opinions. These articles contradict Article 20.1(c) which says that a journalist has a duty to “defend the plurality of opinions, ensuring the ability of expression of different currents of opinion and respect for cultural, religious and ethnic diversity.” We hope that the latter point of view will prevail.

Timor-Leste: Onde a democracia está em risco

By Tempo Semanal editor/publisher José Antonio Belo
SADLY, I have bad news to report from East Timor. It is not yet clear how long my colleagues and I will be able to freely report the news. But readers should know, things are not what they seem in the glowing press releases from Government Palace in Dili.

The government, through its members in the national Parliament, is taking steps to limit basic freedoms held by Timorese citizens.

East Timor is now a vibrant and peaceful young democracy, but a few weeks ago it took a significant step backwards towards the days of the Suharto regime, when Indonesia occupied East Timor for 24 years between 1975 and 1999.

On May 6, the national Parliament of East Timor passed a law to regulate the media and freedom of expression in East Timor. The law has yet to be promulgated by the President of the Republic, Taur Matan Ruak, although it was sent to him to pass last week.

The law is not only undemocratic but is also in violation of the constitution. The constitution gives rights to the media and citizens for freedom of expression in articles 40 and 41, but the new law seeks to limit, restrict and in some cases terminate those rights.

José Belo ... East Timor will become a democracy that "responds
not to citizens’ interests, but to those of the political
and moneyed elite". Photo: David Robie

East Timor is in danger of becoming a guided democracy: one in which the democracy responds not to citizens’ interests, but to those of the political and moneyed elite.

In East Timor, that elite is feeding happily on the more than $US15.7 billion (A$16.8 billion) in the nation’s Petroleum Fund. This is something they are seeking to secure in the long term.

Silencing dissent
The elites are creating measures to silence dissent and public debate about government programmes and public spending. One way in which they are doing so is through this new media law.

Some of the most serious concerns citizens and media actors have about the new law include its measures to define media broadly so as to include citizen media. That means anyone who collects and disseminates information, such as bloggers, NGOs, institutions, book authors and even Facebook and Twitter users.

The government and its lawmakers designed the new media law so that a media council of five people has the power to approve and certify journalists.

The council’s independence is dubious and may be influenced by the elite to serve their interests. The law also bans student and freelance journalists unless they have been certified by the proposed, and politicised, media council. This council will be selected by Parliament and media representatives, but paid for by government.

Alarmingly, especially given the role of international and Australian media in East Timor’s struggle for independence, foreign journalists will be barred or require government permission to report from East Timor. This will effectively clamp down on any foreign media except those doing good news stories.

Perhaps foreign journalists will have to smuggle themselves in and out as tourists again? This is reminiscent of the work that I did in the 1990s when helping foreign correspondents report on our struggle against the Indonesian military dictatorship.

The law also bans political, business and state employees from acting as media or journalists. The media council can find that citizens have contravened the law and they would then face harsh penalties. In essence, this copies the defamation law which was intentionally removed from the new penal code.

Corruption investigation
I was investigated in 2009 under that defamation law for reporting on the corruption practised by the then Minister of Justice Lucia Lobato. She is now serving a multiyear sentence in prison. Perhaps if this law was in place then, it would be me in prison now instead of the ex-minister.

So the elites of East Timor are concerned that free speech will limit their ability to control and abuse the Petroleum Fund for their own benefit. Anti-corruption programs have had little effect. Some offenders have been made an example of, but this is mostly window dressing. The vast majority remain unhindered in their pocket-lining. Despite popular promises to limit or terminate 100 per cent lifelong pensions to all members of government and Parliament, nothing has happened.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Even the supposedly clean Minister of Finance, Emilia Pires, is under investigation for awarding contracts to her husband. But people in Dili believe this will come to nothing. Countless other members of government as well as members of Parliament, past and present, are under similar scrutiny. This scrutiny is due to media activity, and it is for this reason that media and citizens are about to be muzzled.

Furthermore, the political alliance between the government and the opposition, designed to protect elite interests in the name of national stability, suggest that the elites are consolidating their position in order to divide the spoils of independence. Citizens will just have to be silent, or be made to be silent, if they disagree. Clearly, there is a conceptual divide between the citizens and the elites.

The elites think they own the country, whereas the citizens do, at least in a real democracy instead of a guided democracy. If the law is promulgated, we will be significantly less free than we have been since 1999. Should this happen, there will be a significant resistance against the law, even if it means some of us have to go to prison in defence of our rights.

Jose Antonio Belo is one of the leading investigative journalists of Timor-Leste and president of the Timor-Leste Press Union. This article was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Bissau: A gangrena do narcotráfico

Sur son passé d'enfant-soldat, Allen Yéro Embalo a tiré un trait. Devenu journaliste, il veut porter la plume dans la plaie. Pas facile dans un pays où les trafics gangrènent jusqu'au sommet de l'État.

Pour des raisons de sécurité, Allen Yéro Embalo, journaliste de 57 ans, ne se déplace qu'en taxi collectif. Sous son oreiller, une kalachnikov veille sur son sommeil. En Guinée-Bissau, où les assassinats politiques succèdent aux coups d'État et où la classe politique et l'état-major sont soupçonnés d'implication dans divers trafics, le travail ne manque pas. Les risques non plus.
À la fin des années 1960, le jeune Allen, fils d'un guérillero du Parti africain pour l'indépendance de la Guinée et du Cap-Vert (PAIGC), mène la vie d'un enfant-soldat transbahuté de campement en campement. Dans la zone frontalière entre le Sénégal et les deux Guinées, il apprend le b.a.-ba de la vie de maquisard. Un jour, son groupe tombe nez à nez avec une patrouille sénégalaise : "Ils nous ont évacués vers Ziguinchor, où le gouverneur nous a dit : "La place d'un enfant n'est pas dans un maquis"." Allen y restera scolarisé jusqu'à l'indépendance, en 1973.
Rapatriement précoce
De retour au pays, il obtient une bourse pour Cuba, où il est censé bénéficier de l'enseignement offert aux jeunes des "pays progressistes". Avec une vingtaine de fortes têtes, il lance un mouvement de désobéissance qui lui vaudra un rapatriement précoce. "Dès mon retour à Bissau, on m'a envoyé en prison pour six mois." À sa sortie, Allen gagne clandestinement le Sénégal, où il décrochera une licence en lettres modernes avant de bénéficier d'une bourse pour étudier le journalisme au Cesti, le Centre d'études des sciences et des techniques de l'information. En 1988, il rejoint le fondateur du premier journal indépendant de Bissau, L'Expresso Bissau. Allen Yéro Embalo y est chargé des enquêtes. Il a trouvé sa vocation.

En fouinant dans les magouilles du ministère de la Pêche, il s'attire l'opprobre du régime de Nino Vieira. Après trois semaines d'incarcération, Embalo s'évade et s'enfuit au Sénégal, où il collaborera un temps avec la presse privée. "À mon retour, en 1990, j'ai été convoqué deux fois au ministère de l'Intérieur, relate-t-il. Quand ils ont appris que je sortais d'une pépinière du PAIGC, ils m'ont fichu la paix." En 1995, il commence à piger pour l'AFP, ce qui lui vaudra d'être sollicité parallèlement par RFI pour devenir son correspondant à Bissau. Son réseau de contacts lui assure des entrées dans les maquis du Mouvement des forces démocratiques de Casamance (MFDC) comme auprès du chef de guerre sierra-léonais Fodé Sanko.
Fouiller sous les tapis d'un régime gangrené par le narcotrafic
Parallèlement, Embalo continue de fouiller sous les tapis d'un régime gangrené par le narcotrafic. Un jour, dans l'archipel des Bijagos, il assiste à un parachutage de colis par voie aérienne. "J'ai pris en photo des éléments de la Marine qui allaient les récupérer, mais des habitants m'ont probablement balancé." Dès son retour dans la capitale, il reçoit un SMS d'un ami militaire : "Si tu es chez toi, dégage vite fait !" Il se réfugie chez un voisin, juste à temps pour éviter l'arrestation.
Entre 2005 et 2007, les avertissements se font de plus en plus pressants ; son domicile et son véhicule essuient des tirs. Menacé, il met le cap sur Paris où il restera quatre années en exil.
Après son élection, en 2009, le président Malam Bacaï Sanha tentera de le convaincre de revenir exercer à Bissau. En 2011, Embalo se résout à prendre son billet retour. Pendant six mois, il fait profil bas. Mais cet assagissement ne dure qu'un temps. Au lendemain du coup d'État d'avril 2012, le pillage des ressources naturelles explose. Allen Yéro Embalo mène l'enquête sur la coupe illégale de bois, un sujet sensible qui lui vaut une nouvelle salve de menaces. "J'aurais pu m'enrichir mais ce n'est pas ce que je recherche, conclut-il. Quand un journaliste devient riche, ça pose question."


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Caos no Norte do Iraque

As many as 500,000 people have been forced to flee the Iraqi city of Mosul after Islamist militants effectively took control of it, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says.

Troops were among those fleeing as hundreds of jihadists from the ISIS group overran the city and much of the surrounding province of Nineveh.

PM Nouri Maliki has asked parliament to declare a state of emergency.

The US said the development showed ISIS was a threat to the entire region.

ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which is also known as ISIL - is an offshoot of al-Qaeda.

It now controls considerable territory in eastern Syria and western and central Iraq, in a campaign to set up a militant enclave straddling the border.
'Chaotic situation'
Residents of Mosul - Iraq's second city - said jihadist flags were flying from buildings and that the militants had announced over loudspeakers they had "come to liberate" the city.

"The situation is chaotic inside the city, and there is nobody to help us," said government worker Umm Karam. "We are afraid."

ISIS in Iraq

• The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has 3,000 to 5,000 fighters, and grew out of an al-Qaeda-linked organisation in Iraq
• ISIS has exploited the standoff between the Iraqi government and the minority Sunni Arab community, which complains that Shia PM Nouri Maliki is monopolising power
• It has already taken over Ramadi and Falluja, but taking over Mosul is a far greater feat than anything the movement has achieved so far, and will send shockwaves throughout the region
• The organisation is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - an obscure figure regarded as a battlefield commander and tactician. He was once the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, one of the groups that later became ISIS.

Staff working for the IOM in Mosul say that all official buildings there have been taken over, including police and military bases, and the airport.

Many police stations were reported to have been set on fire and hundreds of detainees set free.

Dozens of vehicles were destroyed in and around Mosul as the militants advanced

Security forces were reportedly among those who left their belongings and fled

Hundreds of thousands of people have now left Mosul, and are heading to Kurdistan

Cars carrying Mosul residents caused a giant traffic jam outside the nearby Kurdish city of Irbil

"The army forces threw away their weapons, changed their clothes, abandoned their vehicles and left the city," Mahmud Nuri, a resident fleeing Mosul, told the AFP news agency.

There has been a large number of civilian casualties, the IOM says, and some mosques have been converted into clinics to treat the injured.

Late on Tuesday, ISIS militants were also reported to have taken the nearby town of Baiji, home to Iraq's largest oil refinery, but they now appear to have withdrawn in the face of army and police reinforcements.  BBC

O poderoso reino de Khazar

The Khazars were a Pagan civilization, and in a short period in history, became the largest and most powerful kingdom in Europe, and possibly the wealthiest also. They brought with them their religious worship that was a mix of phallic worship and other forms of idolatrous worship practiced in Asia by other Pagan nations. This form of Pagan worship continued into the seventh century  with vile forms of sexual excesses and lewdness indulged in by the Khazars as part of their religious beliefs. This form of worship produced to a large degree a moral degeneracy that the Khazarian King could no longer endure.
In the seventh century King Bulan ( the ruler at that time ) decided to end the practice of Phallic worship and all other forms of idolatrous worship and to make one of three monotheistic religions, ( which he new very little about ) the new Khazarian state religion.
After an historic session with representatives from the three monotheistic religions, King Bulan decided to adopt "Talmudism", ( as it was known then and practiced today as Judaism,) over Islam and Christianity and became the new state religion.
King Bulan and his four thousand feudal nobles were promptly converted by rabbis imported from Babylonia for the event. Phallic worship and all other forms of idol worship were there after forbidden. The Khazarian Kings invited large numbers of Rabbis from Babylon and vacinity, to come and open synagogues and schools to instruct the population in the new state religion.
After the mass conversion of the King and his empire, none other than a so called or self styled Jew

could occupy the Khazarian throne. The empire became a virtual theocracy with the religious leaders being the civil administrators as well.  During this time the Talmud was added to or altered to protect their state religion from any other outside religious influence and to prevent a return to previous vile worship styles.

The ideologies of the  Talmud became the axis of political, cultural, economic and social attitudes and activities throughout the Khazarian kingdom. The Talmud provided civil and religious law.
When the Khazars in the first century B.C. invaded eastern Europe their mother-tongue was an Asiatic language, referred to in the Jewish Encyclopedia as the "Khazar languages". They were primitive Asiatic dialects without any written alphabet or any written form. When King Bulan was converted in the 7th century he decreed that the Hebrew characters that he saw in the Talmud and other Hebrew documents was thereupon to become the alphabet for the Khazar language. the Hebrew characters were adopted to the phonics of the spoken Khazar language. The Khazars adopted the characters in order to provide a means for  a written record of their speech.
The present day language of the Khazars is known as "Yiddish". The Khazars adapted words to their requirements from the German, the Baltic and Slavonic languages.
The Khazars adopted a great number of words from the German language. The Germans had a much more advanced civilization than their neighbors the Khazars so the Khazars sent their children to German schools and higher learning institutions. The "Yiddish" is not a German dialect. Many are led to believe that "Yiddish" must be German since it shares so much with the German language. The Khazars must have spoken some language when they invaded Eastern Europe. What was the language that the Khazars spoke for over a thousand years? When did they discard it? How did an entire population discard one language for another all of a sudden?
"Yiddish" must not be confused with "Hebrew" because they both use the same characters as their alphabets. There is not one word of "Yiddish" in ancient "Hebrew" nor is there one word of ancient "Hebrew" in "Yiddish".
During the 10th, 11th 12th, and 13th centuries the rapidly expanding Russian nation gradually swallowed up the Khazarian kingdom. After the fall of the Khazarian kingdom the people were known as "Yiddish" in Russia and Eastern Europe.
They still to this day, refer to themselves as "Yiddish".

The year was 986 A.D. the ruler of Russia, Vladimir III, became a convert to Christianity in order to marry a Catholic Slovonic princess of a neighboring sovereign state. Vladimir made his newly acquired Christian faith the state religion of Russia replacing the pagan worship formerly practiced since Russia was founded in 820 A.D. Vladimir III and his successors as rulers of Russia attempted in vain to convert his so called or self styled "Jews", now Russian subjects, to Russia's state religion "Christianity".
These Khazarian Jews in Russia refused and resisted Christianity vigorously, they refused to adopt the Russian alphabet in place of Hebrew characters used in writing their "Yiddish" language. They opposed ever attempt to bring about their assimilation of the former Khazarian kingdom into the Russian nation.
 
After the last and final blow from the Russians the Khazarian King and his twenty-five wives(all of royal blood), and sixty concubines emigrated to Spain with many family members ,and some went to Hungary and Poland, but the mass of the people stayed in their native country.

Jews of our era fall into two main categories the Ashkenazim Jew (common), whom in 1960 numbered around 11 million. The term Ashkenazim Jew is associated with Germany, Hungary and Poland which shared culture and borders with the Khazarian empire and received a large migration of "Yiddish" people from the disintegrating Khazarian kingdom.
The Sephardim Jews who numbered about 500,000 in 1960  and are the descendants of the Spanish Jews that were expelled from Spain by the Moslems in 1492.

Now are you wondering the same as I am, just who are the majority of those people now living in modern day Israel anyway?, Well it looks as though 90% of them are probably descendants of the Great Khazars and never were descendants of Abraham.

                                                                                             FRED MILLAR

Israel e Palestina reuniram-se no Vaticano

Domingo, 8 de junho de 2014 - um momento histórico, uma imagem indelével: o encontro de oração no Vaticano com o Papa Francisco e os presidentes israelita e palestiniano, Shimon Peres e Mahmoud Abbas, na presença do Patriarca de Constantinopla Bartolomeu I. As invocações foram proferidas em várias línguas, todas elas dirigidas para uma só prece: a paz na Terra Santa.
O local do encontro foi um cantinho relvado nos Jardins Vaticanos. O Papa Francisco, o Patriarca Bartolomeu e os dois Presidentes ficaram no centro enquanto as delegações, os cantores, os músicos e a imprensa ladearam este encontro memorável. Usaram da palavra os três principais protagonistas: o Papa Francisco e os presidentes Peres e Abbas. O Santo Padre afirmou que este é o momento de “derrubar os muros da inimizade e percorrer o caminho do diálogo e da paz” e considerou que este mundo “é uma herança” mas também “um empréstimo” aos nossos filhos:
“Senhores Presidentes, o mundo é uma herança que recebemos dos nossos antepassados, mas é também um empréstimo dos nossos filhos: filhos que estão cansados e desfalecidos pelos conflitos e desejosos de alcançar a aurora da paz; filhos que nos pedem para derrubar os muros da inimizade e percorrer o caminho do diálogo e da paz a fim de que o amor e a amizade triunfem.”
O Papa Francisco sublinhou ainda que para dizer sim ao diálogo e não à violência; sim às negociações e não às hostilidades é preciso coragem:
“É preciso coragem para fazer a paz, muita mais do que para fazer a guerra. É preciso coragem para dizer sim ao encontro e não à briga; sim ao diálogo e não à violência; sim às negociações e não às hostilidades; sim ao respeito dos pactos e não às provocações; sim à sinceridade e não à duplicidade. Para tudo isto, é preciso coragem, grande força de ânimo.”
Um sentido agradecimento foi dirigido ao Papa Francisco quer pelo presidente Peres quer pelo presidente Abbas por ter proposto no Vaticano este encontro. Ambos tomaram a palavra. Ouçamos primeiro Shimon Peres que se expressou em hebraico que afirmou que se deve pôr fim “à violência” e “ao conflito”:
“ Dois povos – israelitas e palestinianos – desejam ardentemente a paz. As lágrimas das mães sobre os seus filhos estão ainda marcadas nos nossos corações. Nós devemos pôr um fim aos gritos, à violência, ao conflito. Nós todos temos necessidade de paz. Paz entre iguais.”
A realização da verdade, da paz e da justiça foi a prece do presidente Mahmoud Abbas que falou em árabe:
“ Por isso pedimos-Te, Senhor, a paz na Terra Santa, Palestina e Jerusalém, juntos com o seu povo. Nós pedimos-Te de tornar a Palestina e Jerusalém, em particular, uma terra segura para todos os crentes, e um lugar de oração e de culto para os seguidores das três religiões monoteístas.”
Com as palavras dos dois presidentes, israelita e palestiniano, terminou este encontro que ficou marcado por um cordial abraço e pelo plantar de uma oliveira para a paz. (RS)  Rádio Vaticano