Community, dignity, reconciliation

This third Congress, as the two previous ones did, seeks to provide opportunities for dialogue so that we can share, receive and give. At the same time to offer a time in which we can question and be questioned, in which we learn the vital lesson of solidarity.

The first Congress in Manila 1989 on the theme ‘Communication for community’ helped us to recognise the importance of democratic and participatory communication in the service of community. That’s why we said that ‘...communication should not be manipulated by a few or misappropriated by a single centre of power.’

Six years later, gathered for a second time in Mexico under the banner of ‘Communication for human dignity’, we were confronted time and again with the reality of a world in which human dignity is overwhelmed by oppression, wars, and poverty. A world in which, despite the enormous technological progress that has reached many places, the human being has gone from being marginalised to being excluded. This reality, which assails the very roots of what it is to be human, led Congress to conclude with an urgent question: ‘How can people of faith promote human dignity for all in a world where power structures, including the media, so often undermine it?’

Another six years have passed and we are together again, with new hopes and challenges, yet not forgetting that yesterday’s topics have not been exhausted or overcome, nor have they lost their validity. Today we meet under the slogan ‘Communication: From confrontation to reconciliation’. Why this theme? It emerged from dialogue with the different regions, for whom the search for a more peaceful and just world seemed a basic need. The abuse of power and the dreams of imperialism and domination that characterised extensive periods of history are a constant feature of these times. We cannot forget that, since 1945, the world has not woken up to one single day when there has not been armed confrontation in some corner of the earth. For many, Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem a distant and demonic past. But we cannot ignore those voices that once again talk of cold war in order to support a new armaments race, astronomically multiplying the possibility of a real holocaust for the whole of humanity.

Does communication have any role to play in this complex world of competing interests? Does communication have something to bring to the long and difficult road that leads from confrontation to reconciliation? Answering these questions is not easy, nor do we pretend to do so. This is a task requiring the commitment of us all. That’s why my purpose here is limited to sketching some thoughts as a contribution to our dialogue. I believe there are at least four aspects of the theme that must be taken into account in order to understand what reconciliation means and in what way communication can play a role.

Reconciliation is a point of departure

Reconciliation is not the culmination of a process in which all differences are worn out. Neither does it mean having to erase the past. It does not try to cover the hurts and pains that have been suffered with a blanket of forgetfulness. Reconciliation does not relativise the position of each side and try to manufacture an artificial, diplomatic outcome. Because, as Mexican statesman Benito Juárez said, ‘Among peoples, as among men, peace is respect for another person’s rights.’ Reconciliation is a point of departure, where we get ready to dialogue, to get to know each other as we really are, to try to understand each other and investigate the why of our misunderstandings. Reconciliation is beginning the revision of our own histories together with others. Because, most likely, the complete history has not yet been written. Someone will have to share with us the truth that our backs prevent us from seeing. The arrogance of triumph or the bitterness of defeat can be obstacles that cloud our understanding of the roads to reconciliation, because each will try to dehumanise the other.

For this reason we ask ourselves, is it possible that there is a history to be written in which mistakes are confessed, in which a human face is given to the enemy, in which we can begin to discern paths that lead to encounter, to communication? We are convinced that communication in the service of reconciliation is communication in the service of truth and justice. Because there cannot be true reconciliation unless we destroy the barriers that degrade the human condition, that convert human beings into figures and statistics, when – because this is what the market demands – the well-being of everyone else is subordinated to the benefit of the few.

Now, is reconciliation possible for those who have had to face oppression, religious discrimination, racial arrogance, economic subjugation? It would seem that trying to approach the theme from the idea of reconciliation presupposes a naive vision of reality. It is important to point out that the idea of reconciliation is a central theme of almost all religions. This religious connotation would seem to increase distrust. Because we have to recognise that, at various times in human history, religions have been the least disposed to promoting a process of reconciliation.

Fundamentalisms served to censure ideas, to burn people at the stake, to persecute peoples, to dominate consciences and set up divisive barriers among human beings. To justify their actions, generally they sought protection in the supposed demands of their gods. They insisted that these gods had to be placated, because if the relationship with them were broken, their anger would awake and it would be necessary to make sacrifices of expiation. For this reason, in many such religions, the idea of reconciliation is linked to the need to expiate sins by carrying out purification rites in order to calm the spirits of the angry gods.

Today, the powers of all times, and you can give them whatever names you like, turn into gods when they regard their demands as sacred and require full submission to their desires and orders. That’s why, when an economic system, a political movement, or a nation sees itself as something sacred, it becomes a god. In the same way that the old gods, when their orders were not carried out, got angry and demanded sacrifices. So, oppression and subjugation of the weakest is considered a suitable punishment. The modern gods, in the name of the economy and prosperity, demand unconditional devotion, so that everything that opposes them becomes an enemy that has to be eliminated. One can wonder, for example, if the interminable embargoes on people such as those in Cuba and Iraq, or the burden of unjust and unpayable debts that weighs on impoverished peoples, are not expressions of the sacrifices required that daily claim the lives of thousands of innocent people.

On the other hand, we cannot forget that the idea of guilt and punishment has permeated Christian thinking. Thus, at various times, the idea of expiation and reconciliation was closely related to the old concept that someone has to carry the blame, to become a sacrificial victim. This gave rise, among other things, to the consecration of dictatorial regimes that claimed to be God’s instruments in achieving the purification and expiation of the people. Thus they cut short the lives of thousands, imposed fear and censorship and gained religious approval. These were times when Christians corrupted the essence of the concept of reconciliation to become agents of confrontation.

I think it is important to indicate that, strikingly, in the oldest Christian tradition, God’s image is not the image of an angry god who requires human expiation. On the contrary, God appears offering restitution, new life. It is interesting to point out that, in the earliest Christian writings – the letters of the Apostle Paul – when he speaks about reconciliation he uses a word that has no religious connotation and has nothing to do with sacrifice or expiation. On the contrary, he uses a word whose basic meaning is exchange or barter. That’s why it is quite possible that, when it comes to reconciliation, he wishes to make it clear that he is not referring to any human expiation. Paul is convinced that God is offering an exchange of relationship between Himself and human beings for which there are no prerequisites. To that generous exchange offered by God, he adds, it is only necessary to respond with ‘service to reconciliation’, a service carried out in daily life. Sacrifices are not required; only a willingness to experience the exchange, to begin a new life of service with the aim of constructing the whole community on the basis of reconciliation.

Our first affirmation is that reconciliation is a point of departure and, being a point of departure it means, secondly, that:

Reconciliation presupposes changes

The Swiss theologian Hans Küng has repeatedly insisted that there is no future for humanity if we do not strive towards the ‘search for a new global ethic’.1 He finds that all the great religions seem to agree that the most important themes to be faced are summarised in these four: the preservation of human rights; the emancipation of women; the realisation of social justice; and the immorality of war. Facing up to them, of course, presupposes changes and great ones. Some ten years ago a World Council of Churches document laid out in summary terms some of the difficult situations our world was passing through:

∑ Every minute, the world’s nations spend 1.8 million dollars on military armaments.
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∑ Every hour, 1500 children die through hunger-related causes.
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∑ Every day, a species is made extinct.
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∑ Every week, during the 1980s, more people were detained, tortured, murdered, turned into refugees, or in some way violated by acts carried out by oppressive regimes than in any other time in history.
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∑ Every month, the global economic system adds thousands of millions of dollars to the catastrophically unbearable debt burden weighing on the countries of the Third World.
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∑ Every year, a forest area the size of three-quarters of Korea is destroyed and lost.
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∑ Every decade, if global warming continues to grow, the temperature of the atmosphere will dramatically increase (between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees centigrade) and with it the level of the oceans, with disastrous consequences especially in coastal areas.2
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This disturbing reality, sadly, continues to be ignored and is getting worse day by day.

In the latest Human Development Report prepared by the United Nation,3 we can find a series of bright lights and shadows in the reality of our world. Thus, it shows a sustained advance in the development of human rights although at the same time it recognises that it is dealing with an incomplete agenda. Quite possibly it is the women’s movements that are the primary movers in this crusade for human dignity. It is no surprise that in various places it has been women who have been in the vanguard on issues of life and justice. Allow me to mention, at least, that brave woman in Myanmar, Aung San Su Kyi, who continues her struggle for justice and hope in the midst of dubious support from the international community. Similarly, I should like to pay homage to the mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. It was they who, in my country of Argentina, broke the silence imposed by the dictators. They created a new language with their white headscarves that gave voice to their denunciation and their call for truth. Even today they continue to be the country’s conscience and active memory calling for justice and life.

This growing awareness of human rights and justice has boosted the new protagonist role being undertaken in various places in the world by social movements. We know that their origins and orientation are very different. They come from ecological groups, students, human rights organisations, workers, and feminists. They are for the Zapatista movement in Mexico, they belong to the Landless movement in Brazil, they share the struggle with rural workers in India. They have access to new technologies. They multiply their communications by means of e-mail and open pages on the Internet. They know what they don’t want and, possibly, it costs them dear to shape the world they want. They don’t believe in this world of one-way thinking, and for that reason they are against a capitalism that has been taken up as a synonym for democracy. They mistrust the political because they feel themselves unrepresented and lacking participation. At times their demands seem disordered and ill-timed, but that does not make their protest or their search less valid. Because they experience the threat of a world managed by transnational corporations, progressively deregulating the business world to protect their own interests and not those of the people. They have protested and continue to protest against the god of the market every time the great powers get together, whether in Seattle, Washington or Quebec, despite the repression and censorship they have to face on every occasion. Sadly, the media focus on the excesses of the few and not on the demands that lie at the heart of the demonstrations. More than 50 people arrested in Washington, during one of the World Trade Organisation meetings, made a declaration in which they said, among other things: ‘We believe that love, compassion, freedom, human and environmental rights should be the guiding forces in our society. We are determined to help create a world in which these values are stronger than self-interest.’

The active presence of these different and heterogeneous social actors clashes with the growing reaction of those who do not want change and see in these movements a threat to the status quo. As Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, once said: ‘Human beings are social beings, whose greatest wish is to live together and to co-operate in different ways, to influence what happens around them, to be appreciated for their contribution to their surroundings. Civil society is one of the key ways in which we can exercise our human nature to the full. Its enemies know it and this knowledge inspires their opposition.’ But it is from these movements that a new awareness is growing to confront the challenges of the 21st century. Susan George has shown, for example, that in the case of debt, even for selfish reasons, those who resist change must be alert to what she called the ‘debt boomerang’.4 Because its effects have a repercussion on us all. For this reason the ever-present and menacing conflicts and wars are the constants that go hand-in-hand with debt and are, without a doubt, what contribute most to global instability.

Faced with the enormous difficulties that a large part of our world is experiencing, there can be no proposal for reconciliation that does not promote change in which the lives of human beings and the integrity of the earth form the axis on which community is built.

If reconciliation is a point of departure, and if reconciliation presupposes change, then, in third place, reconciliation must begin with respect for human dignity.

Reconciliation begins with respect for human dignity

The film ‘Pretty Village Pretty Flame’, by director Srdjan Dragovecic, is the story of the long conflict in Bosnia that culminated in the end of Yugoslavia. It is rightly dedicated to ‘the film industry of a country that no longer exists’. It focuses on describing the deteriorating friendship between a Serb and a Muslim due to the unending civil war. At the height of battle, two soldiers are looking at the smoking ruins which are all that remains of a small village. And, as if coming out of a dream, they say to each other: ‘We have been bombarding this place and we don’t even know its name.’

Human dignity is like a flame whose light and warmth lives and grows in the encounter of human beings in solidarity and flickers and dies when a human being is demeaned. Kamla Bhasin, who has worked for many years in the Food and Agriculture organisation in her country, India, told us during the Mexico Congress that: ‘We are talking of human dignity because we feel in the present world human dignity is under attack, it is getting lost and as communicators we wish to do our bit to restore dignity to human beings. In my moments of despair I feel people like us are like professional mourners... Aren’t many of our conferences, videos and films just mourning sessions or post mortems?... It is important to keep hope alive, but if those forces which are destroying our values are not challenged by us, there is little hope for hope.’5

From aboriginal communities, like those in Canada, we learn how broken community and harmony is re-established.6 Everything starts with dialogue in a circle and it is there that decisions are taken. As human beings we are the product of our relationships, so any insult implies a disharmony that requires a remedy both for the individual and the community. So that in order to arrive at justice, the process must involve everyone in the relationship. This includes both the person who has offended as well as each one of their victims. What are they trying to achieve with this form of administering justice? Its aim is to remedy, not to punish. Thus, in the circle, each one has the chance to speak, to respect the dignity of all the participants because the remedy has to come from the community.

To speak of human dignity is to speak of authentic communication. Because it is in communication with other human beings that true human dignity is expressed. When we say that all human beings are equal and belong to a single human family, we don’t do so divorcing it from reality. We don’t ignore the enormous inequalities that exist in our world, from the remote opportunity of survival that millions have from the moment of birth to the slender possibilities of study, work and health they will have to face in the future. Cees Hamelink once reminded us that freedom of information in the liberal tradition is not directly related to the principle of equality. For that reason he insists that a radical interpretation of human rights is necessary, because situations of social inequality demand an unequal treatment of inequalities.

At the beginning of this year the city of Davos, Switzerland, transformed into a fortress, was the venue of the so-called Economic Forum attended by the world’s economic and political elite. At the same time, in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, the Global Social Forum took place, in which the most varied social groups and movements took part. In Davos, participants were inundated by questions and demands from the poorest countries. They were mainly related to the topic of the protectionist barriers on agriculture set up by the countries of the North; liberalisation of the markets being imposed on intermediary countries without a corresponding opening up of the affluent nations; the huge ‘brain drain’ (some estimate that, for example, 30% of information technicians working for Microsoft come from India). The talks demonstrated that participants are not ignorant of this situation and see their human and social dimensions. As Carleton Fiorina, President of Hewlett-Packard, said: ‘The corporations’ interests are going to be sacrificed if we don’t succeed in reducing the inequalities.’

Meanwhile, in Porto Alegre, some thousands of people wanted to express what Brazilian sociologist Emir Sader defined as: ‘opposition to the commercialisation of the world. Because the world is not for sale and the essential has no price.’ For him, this fact has managed in some way to unite ecologists, trade unionists and feminists.7 At one moment the idea came up to organise a teleconference between the two meetings. In Davos there didn’t seem much enthusiasm for taking part in dialogue, despite the fact that the technology allowed them to allay the fears that surrounded the fortress. Nevertheless, the electronic meeting took place, although the dialogue in itself didn’t seem very fruitful. Such that the Minister of Culture of Mali could only sum it up in these words: ‘The debate demonstrated the arrogance of the rich and our need to consolidate this social movement and to create alternatives.’

Now, does this mean that efforts to secure at least a rapprochement with these new international powers are useless? Will it be possible to pursue this line of ‘business is business’ as a kind of law imposed on every social consideration? Will the fear on which the economic dictatorship that has been built up is breaking up be the reason for reneging on all dialogue that seeks change in favour of the people? Will it be possible, some time, to achieve dialogue that, in the spirit of the Canadian aboriginal communities, ensures the health of the whole community?

The search for dignity in a spirit of reconciliation must encourage communicators to support any attempt at establishing a dialogue circle in the search for the good of the community. What have we learnt, for example, from what happened to the pharmaceutical laboratories in South Africa in the face of the tremendous calamity of AIDS? The people’s steady and insistent demand led to them finally having to concede drastic reductions in their exorbitant earnings and make the medicines accessible. Even a conservative London newspaper, in its business section, joined in the demands with this headline: ‘Poor patients must take precedence over patents’.8

This topic of patents, of intellectual property rights, will have to be studied seriously, because it is becoming one more tool of oppression. Today, powerful commercial media are moving with the aim of taking complete control over electromagnetic waves. Already there are those who are proposing to convert the electromagnetic spectrum into private property. If this were to happen, countries would lose one of their last vestiges of power. Our right to communication will depend totally on the goodwill of global media.9

Reconciliation is a point of departure, presupposing changes and beginning with respect for dignity.

Reconciliation is working to build community

The United Nations report on development states that the central challenge for human rights in the 21st century is the eradication of poverty. More than 30,000 children die every day largely from causes that could be prevented but which are ignored. Why? ‘Because these children are invisible in poverty.’10

The difference between the incomes of rich and poor people in 1820 was 3 to 1; in 1950 it was 35 to 1; in 1973 44 to 1; and in 1992 72 to 1. These inequalities in the global sphere and the marginalisation into which millions and millions of human beings are pushed are expressions of a globalising process that cannot be seen in isolation. A process characterised by fragmentation and transience, in which politics has been thrown to the wolves of the economy and society to those of the market. A process directed by invisible forces that it seems cannot be controlled or managed.

The Report recognises, moreover, that human rights in an integrated world demand global justice. It is no longer exclusively a matter of states, because various major players have emerged who have taken centre-stage and are using their own libretto. The World Trade Organisation (WTO), global corporations and the global media have an impact on the lives of people all round the world. For their part, the NGOs are playing a more predominant role. ‘But little in the current global order binds states and global actors to promote human rights globally.’11

It will be important to know how the UN itself amasses its own reports, because it’s obvious that this globalisation needs to be challenged for the future good of humanity. It is not possible for certain countries to persist in assuming the role of global policemen and to do so selectively. They rose up against Saddam Hussein and Milosevic, but they stood on the edge of the tragic events in East Timor and Myanmar. Where were they during the killings in Rwanda and Sierra Leone? Why did they not hesitate to support cruel dictators like the Pinochets, Stroessners, Marcos, Duvaliers and Pol Pots of this world? Sadly, on many occasions, the media have played the role of silent accomplice or have manipulated information to justify the atrocities. As a Latin American journalist wrote: ‘What destabilises democracies are crimes without punishment, hidden histories, mega-corruption, humiliating misery, insecurities and fears, persecution and the murder of journalists and the autocrats that use the law or twist it every time it suits them.’12

How to face up to this situation? It is surely not an easy task. It’s not certain that the law of ‘an eye for an eye’ is the best way of resolving conflicts and creating community. As WACC’s Christian Principles of Communication state:

‘A community of peoples and nations, as well as a community of different churches and religions, has to emerge if humankind is to survive. Therefore, one aim of our work is the breaking down of all kinds of barriers which prevent the development of communities with rights and justice for all – particularly such barriers as race, sex, class, nation, power and wealth... True communication is facilitated when people join together regardless of race, colour or religious conviction, and where there is acceptance of and commitment to one another.’

Is this dreaming too much? Is this asking too much? In the last ten years the number of NGOs in the world has doubled. Civil society is increasingly taking an active role in the defence of people’s rights and in the development of community. Experience in the field of communication tells of signs of the search for restoration, of recreation of the social fabric. Thus it encourages us to know that:

∑ In Kigali a programme for orphaned children, survivors of the Rwandan genocide, is providing them with physical, emotional and moral help so that the children regain their smiles and, by means of song and dance, can begin to heal their wounds.
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∑ Kurds and Berbers equally affirm that the basic value of human dignity lies in their demand for the right to express themselves in their own language, of which they have been unjustly deprived.
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∑ Prisoners in Indonesia, taking part in a project to develop writers, discover new possibilities of life.
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∑ A programme against genital mutilation of girls in Egypt, which confronts age-old traditions, strengthens the belief – that women have insistently stated with total justice – that the health of the whole community lies in restoring the dignity of woman.
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∑ Communicators from different organisations in Latin America that share a love of community radio and the right to communication are working for an integrated community in dialogue, where the media serve that aim.
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∑ Solidarity networks born of base groups are making use of new communication technologies and demonstrating how they can be put at the service of community development.
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All these examples and many more that could be given reveal steps forward in the search for a new community life in which communication has an important part to play to alter this contradictory and unjust world.

Perhaps these examples are not changing the world? Eduardo Galeano used to say that if one can produce just one small change, it means that reality can be changed. In the Divine Comedy, Dante points out that what distinguishes Purgatory from Hell is not the suffering but something more important: hope.

Our theme is ‘Communication: From confrontation to reconciliation’. Let’s say it again: Reconciliation is a point of departure, presupposes changes, begins with respect for human dignity, and works to build community.

Notes

1. Hans Küng, Global Responsibility, SCM Press Ltd. London, 1990, p.88.

2. From a document prepared for the World Council of Churches’ World Assembly on the theme ‘Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation’, Korea, 1990.

3. Human Development Report 2000, UNDP, New York, Oxford University Press, 2000.

4. Susan George, The Debt Boomerang, How Third World Debt Harms Us All, Pluto Press with the Transnational Institute, Archway Road, London. 1992.

5. Kamla Bhasin, ‘Women empowering communication: From Bangkok to Beijing’, in Media Development, 1/1996.

6. I am indebted here to Bernie Harder and Marlene Cuthbert, ‘The Spirit of Community: First Nations Peoples and Canadian Society’, in Communication & Reconciliation: Challenges facing the 21st Century, ed. by Philip Lee. WCC/WACC, 2001.

7. In Página 12, 29 January 2001.

8. The Sunday Times, London, 22 April 2001. Business Section.

9. See ‘Mayday Mayday’ by Jeremy Rifkin in The Guardian, 28 April 2001.

10. Human Development Report 2000, p.8. UNDP, New York. The following information comes from this document.

11. Op. cit. p. 9.

12. José María Pasquini Durán, ‘De vez en cuando la vida’, in Página 12, Buenos Aires, 12 December 1998.

Carlos A. Valle was General Secretary of the World Association for Christian Communication 1986-2001. He graduated from the Institute for Higher Theological Education (ISEDET), Buenos Aires, Argentina, to which he later returned in 1975 as Director of the Communications Department. He also served as Secretary of Studies at the River Plate Study Centre. He is a former President of Interfilm, the Switzerland-based Protestant film organisation, and of La Aurora publishing house. He is the author of Comunicación es evento (1988), Comunicación: modelo para armar (1990) and Challenges of Communication (1995).