XIV
Buried
Lamentation
There
is no distinct setting or background because human suffering and death can
only be represented by darkness and void. On
the left, there are men in non-descript military uniforms in an
attitude of sadness. Their faces are turned toward a coffin; war, no
particular war, but war in general, must mourn its dead. The pain of
the soldiers reveals their human side of brotherhood and compassion.
In the foreground, a child lies in a small white coffin. The
foreground and the background are separated by a curtain which
segregates the soldiers from their civilian victims. But
simultaneously this red curtain (violence) links the two realities:
suffering and death are elements which involve all human beings. The
little group of three civilians on the right highlights this idea,
for the hand of the mother stretched across the curtain is a gesture
of desperation at the loss of her child. |
| A reflection by Brother Bernard Couvillion |
I realized quickly in traveling through the institute that war and its cousin terrorism are never far from our establishments. Throughout Colombia, in the province of Casamance in Senegal and the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, the capital of Lesotho, the isle of Yule in Papua New Guinea, and in Uganda violent attacks have been a menace in recent years. Unicef reported in 1994 that 42 countries were involved in wars and another 37 in serious political conflicts. Because of the complex international alliances involved, commentators are beginning to refer to the ongoing reprisals in the Great Lakes region as the “First World War of Africa.” The
brothers taught me an African proverb: “When elephants fight,
it’s the grass that gets crushed.” Its truth is borne out by
statistics on the evolution of war making. In World War I, loss of
civilian life was less than 10% of total deaths. In World War II, it
was 50%. Since then, wars have killed more civilians than soldiers.
The losses in Vietnam were 80% civilian. In Lebanon, Cambodia,
Rwanda, ex-Yugoslavia, and Chechnya, civilian tombs account for 90%
of the total. The greatest suffering wars cause is to the poorest
population, and among the poorest, to the youngest. Over a typical
year in the 1990’s, 34 African countries taken together saw the
birth of 17 million babies, but war martyred 4 million of them
before they reached the age of 5. In some wars, children were made
intentional targets. The following
instruction was given by a Rwandan commander repeatedly over
radio waves in 1993: “To get rid of the big rats, you have to kill
the little rats.” Some Latin American groups have made a specialty
of the torture and liquidation of children to terrorize villages.
Over the last 15 years, according to a report given to
the general assembly of the UN by Graça Machel, widow of the former
president of Mozambique, one of every two victims of war was a
child! (Les Enfants Esclaves, Martin Monestier,
pp. 164-168) |
| We give voice to the prayer of children victimized by war |
|
Lord my God, turn your ear to my cry. My life is on the brink of the grave. I am reckoned as one in the tomb, I have reached the end of my strength, like one alone among the dead, like the slain lying in their graves, like those you remember no more, cut off, as they are, from your hand. You have laid me in the depths of the tomb, in places that are dark. Your anger weighs down upon me, I am drowned beneath your waves. Will you work your wonders for the dead? Will the shadows stand up and praise you? Will your love be told in the grave or your faithfulness among the dead? Wretched, stricken from my childhood, I have borne your trials; I am numb. |