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Peacecamp 2006:
The Day We Lay Down Our Weapons to Fire Our Voices ...
by Rafael Milan Kropiunigg
[rafael.kropiuniggATgmail.com]
Which prelude to peace would you choose?
Troops marching into Lebanon with AK-47's in front of their faces, or groups
from 'Peacecamp' skipping into Vienna aeroport with nothing but peace in
mind and mouths full of strong debate? Both troops and groups claim to have
the same mission, the mission for peace. Now isn't that ironic?
Before coming to Franzen I thought that politics would cause thunder and
lighting to dance across the debating floor. As the days passed by, it
dawned on me why politics was always secondary during group sessions, and
furthermore, why political discussions never ended in bloody fist-fights,
screeching, or scratching. Only after a while I realised that the purpose of
four nationalities coming together in a village in the heart of Austria's
rural community, was not only to find out what could be done with Hezbollah,
Israel, Syria, Iran, and so on, but rather to learn to simply co-exist
together. The israeli's, palistinian's, austrians, and hungarian's seemed to
have packed no prejudice nor anger into their suitcases.
The particpiants from Israel represent a minority. They are a progressive
segment of people within their society. On a freqeunt basis they have to
deal with racism, prejudice, and violence. Debate seems like an abstract
tool that gets them nowhere. However, these participants have learned that
there is still hope, that there are still people who believe in peaceful
negotiations. Some of them suggest they did not even know that there were
people 'from the other side' sharing their peaceful thoughts.
Even though we sometimes kicked off group dynamic discussions by conversing
about the role of pets in society, and such, we found that when the time was
right we were also able to talk out human issues. These issues usually
received 110 per cent patricipation level - this included topics such as
women's rights, social policy, globalization and a couple others. We all
knew that any talks would not provide immediate answers, but rather that
peaceful debate is a long-term method to solving complicated issues.
It is about "spreading the word," one of our counselor's said. This is true.
A lot of people suggested that they had prejudice feelings towards 'the
other side' before they joined Peacecamp, but left feeling no sense of hate
or regret. We must spread this feeling across the world. I hope this is an
inspiration to you all, and i hope that it will inspire you to give
peace-orientated activities a shot. In reading this, I want you to realise
that being biased will never bring solutions. If both sides victimize one
another, or see themselves as victims, then there will be no solutions. It
is rather paradox that in a camp full of adolescents I learned that we
musn't see life so black and white. We must learn to compromise with shades
of grey in order to get something. Peace is never white. Although Peacecamp
sounds very corny and ideological, I believe that the participants remained
very realistic.
I believe that we must remain on, more or less, neutral ground to pave the
road for mutual co-existance in this world. No matter what the situation.
"To be neither actor nor victim," is the camp slogan, but I believe that it
is almost impossible to be neutral when you are personally affected.
However, we can always try to see thing both both points of views through
consuming a wide range of media and being open to different perspectives.
I have learned that peace starts with the youth. We must break the
generation contract in which belief is passed down by our parents from
generation to generation. Rather, we must be given the chance to make up our
own minds through mingeling and debating with people our own age. We must
come together in camps such as these and brainstorm. This is what I call the
road to peace, and I think we are already on it.
SPREAD THE WORD!
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Beiträge von
Veronika Lion (österreichische Teilnehmerin)
Gabriela Hütter (Österreichische
Workshopleiterin)
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