During his visit to Havana, we met with the humanist Ravi Shankar, with whom we have exchanged about peace, about life, or rather, about the art of living.
Without humanism, social projects fail. We agree. Human values should be elevated to the highest peaks of dignity and the crucial value is that of life. And for us to achieve decent living conditions for all, i.e. the full realization of rights, we need peace.
The synthesis right, peace, is more important than any personal interest and points of view on legal issues that fill the path of reconciliation with obstacles.
Hatred and revenge, the law of retaliation, should step aside so that Colombians can finish the talks with a new social contract founded on principles of humanity.
The criminal law of the enemy won’t be an obstacle to the great national march for peace. Beyond prisons, beyond those laws that only serve to entangle the weak and help the strong, is the restoration of harmony and the collective dream of prosperity.
Don’t forget that armed rebellion is a natural, universal right that assists all peoples in order to resist against unjust regimes, and that she is garrisoned by general amnesty and pardon.
Speaking to the plenipotentiaries of the Government in the talks, we have solved to move away from the Legal Framework for Peace and opt for a comprehensive system of truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition, which considers the political offense with all its related offenses; that is the road we are taking.
The truth, told in a pure, clean way, has healing and restorative effects and it also has enough force to make certain behaviors become res judicata.
We agree with Master Shankar, in the sense that in the end, we are all victims. And if we start from this understanding, we can leave behind, tied in the past, a sad history of violence, which must not be repeated, because society has said NEVER AGAIN.
We want to make progress in the peace talks in Havana, surrounded by the beneficial environment of a ceasefire, which will save us more useless victimization and which will allow us to have talks in an atmosphere of calmness without the sound of the rifles.
Hopefully, Colombians will be able to embrace the Gandhian principle of nonviolence soon.
Thank you, master, for your concern and your effort to bring to Havana your message of peace and your words of reconciliation.
This article first appeared on FARC-EP.
