Things Worth Dying for (Terrorism)

Member Name: 2Quizzy

Product:	Terrorism
Date:	09/03/04 (336 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: **

Disadvantages: **

In the debate of where "terrorism" begins and "fighting for freedom" ends the lines can be extremely blurry.

Churchill roused a Nation with his famous speech that "We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

My Great Uncle was an RAF pilot in World War II. He was born in England and one of those who fought for freedom. He made best friends with a crazy Southern Rhodesian pilot, went out to visit him after the war, and ended up marrying his kid sister. (For those who read my internet review this was the indomitable Great Aunt I mentioned)

My Great Uncle chose to stay in Africa. He built his entire house himself out in the countryside and he stayed and fought to keep it when the "Bush War" was at it's height in the 1970s. The only time it was attacked he wasn't even there. It was my Great Aunt who was held at gunpoint by a group of opposition soldiers (I'm avoiding using either "freedom fighter" or "terrorist" since both words have become clichés). She was the one who sorted them out. She offered to make them breakfast and showed them the key to the cellar where Great Uncle kept his home-made liqueurs and wines. She managed to get away whilst they were drinking and sent an SOS on the radio. Other farmers in the area rallied and a brief bloody gun battle took place on the front lawn. The soldiers lost. My great Uncle returned to find nothing to show for the day's events but a lot of broken bottles and a house and caravan peppered with bullet holes.

When they first told us that story we were all falling about
laughing. My Great Uncle and Aunt met because they were equally irrepressible and that never changed through all their years of marriage. Apart they were each the type of people who left you feeling good about yourself and the world, together they were as lethal and any famous comedy team. They had a joy for life and a love of people that was infectious.

Eventually the violence reached a stage where staying was certain death as their land lay in the hands of the fighting opposition. They couldn't sell their house, no one wants to buy land in a war zone. They left with their holey caravan, their clothes and personal bits and their double bed strapped to the car. The double bed was confiscated at the border for being "too new", but the emeralds they'd hidden in a hollow ornament's base were never found.

Although both beyond retirement age at that stage they got a job working as caretakers at a Home for disabled. Here they wreaked joyous havoc by taking groups on unauthorised picnics and day trips. With the emeralds they eventually were able to build a small cottage on their son-in-law's farm in South Africa. My great Aunt even got a part-time job doing book-keeping from home. They came and visited us on holidays and we'd all fall about laughing till we cried. Life was good once again.

I can't remember what day it was when my great Aunt phoned to say he'd been killed. I do remember it was in the late afternoon because the sun was coming right in the back windows. My great Aunt had gone to town for the day and only found him that evening. She actually spoke to the three men who were responsible just before she left. They'd stopped her in the driveway to ask about jobs and she'd told them they didn't need anyone, but that her husband was home and would give them a sandwich if they went and knocked.

Officially his killers were set free as "political prisoners" in the 1990s
so I'm not sure whether they fall into either "terrorist" or "freedom fighter" categories. All I do know is that being tied up and tortured to death in your own bedroom is not the way anyone should have to die. My great Aunt has coped as best anyone could, especially considering she was the one who found him. She did fall apart the next year when her niece and husband were abducted, tortured and dumped in a river after being murdered. In that case the police did officially classify it as an act of terrorism. The greatest irony that time was that they were picked for being white, but their politics actually put them very actively in the opposing camp so they were basically killed by their own political party's "supporters". So were these supporters terrorists, murderers or freedom fighters?

At the time I was unable to go to any of the funerals as this side of the family lived a two day drive away on the other side of South Africa, but I have been able to go to other funerals of those who were (officially) killed by "terrorists". I took my dad to the funeral of his one friend who was gunned down outside his work one morning. That time I sat in the car since the church was pretty packed and I never knew the man myself, but when family friend's were killed at a New Year's Eve party the whole family went to that one.

That was quite a funeral. There was fear of another attack on the church or some other act of protest as the two couples who were killed at the hotel had both been well-liked and prominent in the community. Our friend's wife had been the matron of the small local hospital and pretty much every nurse was there that day as well as other hospital staff. Feelings were running high and the army positioned troupes and armed vehicles at the corners of the church grounds just in case. The church was filled to bursting and hotter than an oven. The nurses sung a chorus in Xhosa, big dign
itaries said their bits and everyone held hands and sang N'kosi Sikelele Africa. It was one of the more surreal moments of my life and felt more like a political rally than a funeral.

Six months later I was in hospital waiting for minor surgery when a woman was wheeled in to wait as well. We got chatting and it turned out she was there to get shrapnel taken out of her legs. Her third operation. She'd also been at the same hotel that night. I told her the names of the couple I'd known and she went quiet and we just stared at each other until I was wheeled away.

There really wasn't anything either of us could say.

Otherwise I don't have any personal experiences of terrorism, but it's always been there, like "death and taxes". I was eight the first time I saw pictures in the newspaper about a couple who'd been tortured by opposition soldiers. My mom had hidden the paper, but I liked to read the cartoons and had eventually found it. I can see the bleak face of the black woman who had been forced to participate in her husband's torturing staring back at me and the sketches done by someone to show what had been done to him. I've never forgotten those sketches. She would have been Matabele. Most of the opposition freedom fighters were Shona and therefore an opposition ethnic group.

When Mugabe took power in 1981 his special troupes were sent into Matabeleland to deal with the Matabele. Although family and friends knew or guessed what was happening the World only officially came out with a report on Mugabe's act of genocide more than ten years later. It's surmised that anywhere between 5,000 to 30,000 Matabele ended up in Mass graves, but I doubt we'll ever know for sure. My dad's one friend's sister (South African Xhosa by birth) married a Matabele Man and moved up to Rhodesia in the 1970's. He lost contact with her in the 1980s and he's never found what happen
ed to her as far as I know.

dooyoo's blurb for this category states:
"One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. With new anti-terrorism laws coming under fire for curtailing personal freedoms, let us know how far the state should go to contain the terrorist threat."

Well, I can honestly say that South Africa had incredibly stringent laws and inhibitors on personal freedom to fight terrorism and it never stopped everything. My one friend's house was searched because her father took books on Communism out of the local library. My dad made friends with a guy from an opposing political party and a month later we were secretly warned by another friend in the government that our phone calls were being monitored. I was a teenager at the time and spent hours on the phone discussing boys, boys, movies, make-up and.. boys. They must have gone through torture having to listen to reams of taped teenage angst. Serves them right!

Some strict laws made more sense. For a long time all shopping malls had metal detectors at the doors and guards who would search your bags and handbags. I remember one silly woman throwing a fit, refusing to let them look in her handbag. Personally I never minded having either myself or my handbag/shopping bags searched considering the alternative of letting anyone in with anything. I remember the day our local hamburger bar was blown up with a limpet mine stuck under one of the tables. I rather missed them when they stopped as it did make shopping a less stressful experience knowing no criminal, major or minor, could get in and out of a shopping centre easily. In those days we were drilled to report unusual bags or cases left in public areas and you tended to be a bit hyper watching around you.

The stress does start to get to you. I knew one ex-soldier who used to check chairs for explosive devices before he'd sit down. He had a major nervous breakdown after bein
g in
the army too long and he also used to check his bed for mines every night. I don't know how his wife coped with that, but she never showed anything but support for him no matter how neurotic his fears became. I had a friend who's father was from the Congo. He'd escaped by smuggling himself onto an aeroplane. He thought he was going to the USA, but he ended up in South Africa instead and as he spoke no English it took them quite a while to convince him where he was! Her parents had ended up owning a farm in Rhodesia and were ambushed and attacked so many times that even the smallest bang sound would make her younger sister start screaming. At school the kids would set her off by slamming doors. They thought it was great as she'd get hysterical and teachers would dash about and lessons would grind to a standstill. I must admit I used to think bomb scares at school were fun. You'd all have to evacuate the school and we'd sit about on the hockey field chatting whilst the army went through the building. I was also once on a bus that was stopped by the army and we were all taken off and searched. The soldiers were formal, but polite and even apologised for holding us up.

Did strict laws stop people getting killed? Not much, strict laws only make those trying to get through them more creative and innovative. Building bigger walls has never worked for long, go look through your history books. You have to deal with WHY people are doing what they are doing, not simply try to hold them at bay. You want to cure the disease, not simply alleviate the symptoms.

So should people like this be called terrorists or freedom fighters? In my opinion anyone who uses random opportunistic violence (often against innocent victims) to prove their point is a terrorist - and a criminal of the lowest order. "War" against civilians is not war, it's murder.

Does this mean I think these people are "evil" and shou
ld be wiped off the planet without regard? Certainly not! They have to have the same rights as us all or the system called "civilisation" becomes meaningless. Everyone deserves a fair trial and everyone deserves to be heard. Nelson Mandela was responsible for planning acts of violence and destruction when he was a young man. He truly is a case of someone who started as a "terrorist" and ended up a "freedom fighter". A man to be admired. Most people don't start off as terrorists. Many start off frustrated and angry, feeling no-one cares or is listening. Very often their feelings are correct - no-one cares and no-one is listening. No-one is born a terrorist. They're created by unhealthy abnormal societies and situations. All most people want is a chance to live a fair and comfortable life. A child brought up in an environment of violence and horror will grow to be an adult who views these things as perfectly normal. Is he to blame then if he becomes a killer or is the world and/or his society to blame for not finding a way to reach him before it was too late?

That's why I believe that if there is to be a "global war" on terrorism it cannot be fought just with laws and bigger walls or bigger weapons - Violence begets violence. If a global war is to be fought it can only be with the words and actions of ordinary people out there all over the world. It can only be fought by changing the way people think and especially the way they "see" and treat each other. It's the hardest battle anyone could ever choose to fight. Can we make a difference? Well, you don't have to throw a boulder into the pond to start a ripple - just a pebble will do. Ghandi gathered pebble-throwers and freed a nation, Martin Luther King gathered pebble-throwers and changed a constitution.

Simple everyday people with a simple yet extraordinary message - that you don't need to be the strongest force or have th
e most powerful laws and weapons. You just have to be willing to keep on trying to make the world a better place. To choose to throw your pebble into the pool rather than hurl stones, bullets and bombs at each other.

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Famous people saying it better than I can:

"Violence just hurts those who are already hurt... Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it." - Cesar Chavez

"We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, '...we shouldn't have done that.' We must remember, my friends, that we have been given a wonderful cause. The cause of freedom! And you and I must be those who will walk with heads held high. We will say, 'We used methods that can stand the harsh scrutiny of history.' " - Desmond Tutu

"There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it."

"If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos." - Martin Luther King

"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." - Nelson Mandela

"Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him. Every murder or other injury, no matter for what cause, committed or inflicted on another is a crime against humani
ty."

"To forgive is not to forget. The merit lies in loving in spite of the vivid knowledge that the one that must be loved is not a friend." - Ghandi

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Now THOSE are ideas worth dying for.

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