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Make world better,
peace prize winners say
By Judith Graham
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 17, 2006
DENVER -- Ten Nobel Peace Prize winners issued an
unprecedented "call to action" to young
people this weekend, asking them to mobilize against
racism and poverty and work to secure the rights
of women and children.
"Action is very important," said the
Dalai Lama, opening a Friday afternoon news conference
where the Nobel laureates outlined their agenda.
"Prayer is not sufficient," he said
as part of the three-day conference here sponsored
by PeaceJam, a Colorado organization that brings
together Nobel Peace Prize winners and young people.
At the event, which drew 3,000 students from
31 countries, peace prize winners called for a
decade-long effort to tackle 10 challenges facing
the world and said they would work "side
by side" with young people to make a difference.
"We say, go for your dreams and reach for
the stars and help God make this a more compassionate,
a more caring, a more gentle world," Archbishop
Desmond Tutu of South Africa told the students.
Several of the peace prize winners used the occasion
to voice disdain for the U.S. war on terror and
related policies.
"We must shout loudly against any national
government that puts aside human rights in the
name of national security," said Mairead
Corrigan Maguire, who won the Nobel Prize in 1976
for promoting a non-violent solution to the conflict
in Northern Ireland.
She made clear she was referring to Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. is holding suspected
terrorists without bringing legal charges against
them.
Turning her attention to the war in Iraq, Maguire
said, "We can't solve these deep ethnic problems
through militarism and war. We cannot use the
old ways; they no longer work.
"We must talk to our enemies. That means
America talking to Al Qaeda and Israel talking
to Hezbollah. We all know in our hearts when dignity
is taken away from us," Maguire said.
Adolfo Perez Esquivel, an Argentine human-rights
leader, evoked gasps when he spoke of a letter
he sent to President Bush asking him "to
stop the craziness which is the war in Iraq."
"Bush is a man who says he prays a lot,
but I think God covers up his ears when Bush prays,"
the 1980 Nobel laureate said.
Shirin Ebadi was the first woman in Iran to become
a judge; her work for women and children was recognized
by the Nobel Committee in 2003.
"I am very sorry about the sad events of
Sept. 11, but I wish that the United States of
America would have built one school in Afghanistan
for each of the victims" instead of going
to war, she said. "We would have seen the
number of terrorists decrease then in 10 years."
Friday's session marked the largest gathering
to date of Nobel Peace Prize winners in the United
States. The goal was to inspire young people to
hope and work for a better future.
"We all have to be part of the solutions
to the problems of this planet or we will all
sink together," said Jody Williams, the only
American on the panel and a peace prize winner
for her efforts to ban land mines.
Her topic was the need for a definition of security
centered on caring for people instead of on costly
weaponry.
"Will those marvelous weapons keep us safe?
No," she said. "If you have nothing
to hope for, why not strap a bomb on yourself?
"If we want to see the world become a different
place, we can and must make different choices,"
Williams added.
That involves "disarming our armed consciousness"
-- breaking down the internal walls that prevent
us from acknowledging or responding to the others'
suffering, Esquivel said.
He spoke of a report that came out on Sept. 11,
2001, only minutes after planes crashed into the
World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania
field, killing almost 3,000 people.
"More than 35,000 children died that same
day and die every day of hunger," but that
news receives no attention, Esquivel said. "I
call that economic terrorism."
As a group, the Nobel laureates called for the
end of house arrest for their colleague Aung San
Suu Kyi, a pro-democracy leader. The UN on Friday
agreed to new talks on Myanmar, providing some
hope that her freedom might become possible if
international pressure continues, Tutu said.
jegraham@tribune.com
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
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