Peter Boyle
Occasionally the innocent casualties of war are given a human face. And it is shocking — sometimes so shocking it can help stop a war.
Last week, in a blogsite (no longer online) by a Cuban doctor serving in East Timor, there was a picture of an eight-year-old boy with an arrow through his cheek. Then there was the widely-published picture of a distraught Palestinian girl, Huda Ghalia, whose picnicking family was wiped out when an Israeli warship shelled the popular beach they were on. John Pilger writes of her case, and the other child victims in that war that spans generations, in this issue of 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly.
The photographic record of the girl's grief recalls the Pulitzer-prize winning photograph by Nick Ut of nine-year-old Kim Phuc, fleeing her village after a napalm attack in Vietnam in 1972. That photo helped end the Vietnam war, though it took another three years of struggle.
But how many pictures like these are needed to even begin to capture the following ugly statistics compiled by UNICEF?
- The proportion of civilian casualties in armed conflicts has increased dramatically and is now estimated at more than 90% — about half of these are children.
- An estimated 20 million children have been forced to flee their homes because of war and are living as refugees in neighbouring countries or are internally displaced within their own countries.
- More than 2 million children have died as a direct result of war over the last decade.
- More than three times that number, at least 6 million children, have been permanently disabled or seriously injured.
- More than 1 million have been orphaned or separated from their families.
- Between 8000 and 10,000 children are killed or maimed by landmines every year.
- An estimated 300,000 child soldiers — boys and girls under the age of 18 — are used as combatants, messengers, porters, cooks and to provide sexual services for soldiers.
We can only begin to describe this atrocity. And, trying as hard as we can, we could never give it its proper human face.
Pilger's article tells another sorry chapter in the story of the war on children, and we are proud to regularly carry his writings. But they do more than shock. They explain the causes of the terrible wars of our age and their relationship to the unjust "peace" in between, as Bertolt Brecht described in a poem:
THOSE AT THE TOP SAY: PEACE
AND WAR
Are of different substance.
But their peace and their war
Are like wind and storm.
War grows from their peace
Like son from his mother
He bears
Her frightful features.
Their war kills
Whatever their peace
Has left over.
Telling that story makes Pilger and GLW extremely subversive to those at the top. Hence, we will not be looking to anyone on top to raise $250,000 for our fighting fund this year. Last week, with the help of workers, pensioners and struggling activists, we raised $2200, bringing the total we have raised so far this year to 33% of our whole-year target.
Thanks to Roger B for $500, to May M for $55, Charlie Jackson of Texans for Peace for $50, and everyone else who chipped in.
If you can help us raise the remaining 67%, please send your donation now to PO Box 515, Broadway 2007, phone the toll-free line 1800 634 206 (calls from within Australia only) or donate online at: .
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 28, 2006.
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