Rest in Peace now.
The Madrid 11 bombing inquiry has ended with a condemnation of all politicians
"You sirs have talked only about yourselves and not of us..."
"from the 11th to the 14th we awaited our dead".
"on the 14th I voted I still hadn't received his [her son's] corpse"
Pilar Manjón - spokesperson for the victims of Madrid 11.
198 dead. 50 non spanish citizens. over 1900 wounded including non spanish citizens. REST IN PEACE
Between the 14th of March and the 14th of December 2004, men took the stand in Madrid to make their declarations to a public inquiry on the bombing of Madrid's trains which killed 198 people and left 1900 injured.
In all, 23 men made their statements.
Men who are important, and indeed some appear to think they are great.
Men who have been or are charged with the responsiblity of security, government, and defence of Madrid.
Men who included the then prime minister, the then leader of the opposition, the then head of the secret service and current ambasador to the Holy See, the then minister of the interior, the then opposition spokesman on the interior, the chief of police, the chief of the army section charged with civil security.
They spoke and spoke,
blamed and blamed.
and from the Irish Times to the TV viewer monitoring companies, comparisons were made.
Finally many of those who read and read
had had enough.
The association of victims of the Madrid 11 attacks were not included in those 23 public men's statements. Indeed those 23 men had thought to leave their submissions "in camera" and off TV and off line. But many of those who read and read said no.
The 24th person to testify was the 1st woman.
Pilar Manjón lost her son on the 11th of March.
She wore black and is still in mourning and cried as she denounced the men of politics, and security and the armed forces for their arguments and accusations that have made no mention of the suffering of the group she is spokesperson for.
Her dignity can not be underestimated.
From the morning of the 11th of March, I have written to indymedia ireland of what happened, from my perspective in Barcelona, of the shock and terror of seeing train carriages exactly like those I daily use to travel destroyed.
50 of the 198 who died were like me immigrants.
That is slightly over a quarter, they were posthumously granted Spanish citizenship and their remains were returned to their families the cost borne by the Spanish State.
Like me they had no right to vote for any of the men who have made such lengthy and barbed statements in the meantime.
Like me they were workers. Unlike me the majority were going to or returning from the lowest paid jobs of cleaners, asembly line workers. Most probably shared twin loyalties to the countries and cultures of their birth and the country to which they had chosen to move, to integrate in, to live in, to love in and (if they could have) grow old in and prospered.
all Rest in Peace now.
May the good people of Ireland, the UK and the english speaking and reading world and maybe those important men who think they are great and wise -
learn something from all of this.
international |
racism & migration related issues |
opinion/analysis
Thursday December 16, 2004 13:04
by iosaf mac diarmada
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"You sirs have talked only about yourselves and not of us..."
"from the 11th to the 14th we awaited our dead".
"on the 14th I voted I still hadn't received his [her son's] corpse"
- Pilar Manjon. the most diginified voice to be heard above the carnage.
rest in Peace not War : rest in Love not Hate
And how many politicians have asked this time that the dead be promptly returned to their families for burial?
And how many mobs are pointing the finger at some ethnic group?
and how many people just want to give it some time.
And how many people would rather join the "shake and see" trying to provoke the guilty to the gallows?
it appears people learn very little from their history.
Bury your dead, heal your wounds.
realise that most londoners are victims.
Then when that is done, the clues and trails will have not gone cold for justice, history ought teach us, that jumping to conclusions, brings us the wrong way.
what if this is not about iraq?
what if this is about the mafia?
or smack? time will tell.
the truth will out and prevail.
Since her dignified statements Pilar Manjon has left Madrid due to rightwing death-threats, for there are still so many who believe her fight for the dead and the truth poorly fit with the conclusions they jumped to that weekend and somehow undermined their spanish/basque agenda.
Her son is remember as one of the trees planted in madrid in the forest of the absent.
RIP
What a surprise eh? I've been without an internet connection today, as there is essential work being done in our house on the electricity and then someone forgot the telephone password, and well- we took a break.
the XX century was about war.
it began with various conflicts in which Europeans of all socio-economic classes took part, with many good and bad people planning alternative futures for not only Europe but for far beyond. These wars built on the creeds of hatred and greed which had found in the soil of the pre- & post-Napoleonic wars of the XVIII and XIX centuries and counter revolutions ready space to subject the world to utterly errant notions of "european" supremacy.
Our work, our "opus" is to create the conditions for peace, justice, concensus, and heal our future generations in the XXI century. We are all the children or grand children or great grand children of soldiers, good and bad men, (poor and manipulated mostly) who were sent to living Hells. And only a few returned. The XX century was about darkness. Bedlams of imperialist, supremacist, and utopian horror.
Others' work is to clean the mess, which never was nor is to be found in just one city, just one country just one state or just one social economic class. And their work is not pleasant, and not popular amongst the clear majority of those who thought they had lived in peace, were borne of peace were enjoying peace. War is made in the mind and heart, and married to technology it enters the cells of memory it pollutes the codes of culture even unto religious belief.
This world, this peace, this war was and is a labyrinth of causes and effects, every child says they hate someone, but the older know they only feel anger, injustice, resentment or fear. What causes the hate of a child for another? And so for their elders, what causes hate for a man or woman of mature years for another? Not one amongst us can point to a history book or a critical text, or a tv documentary or a leader's speech and say "that was the beginning". For at end hatred is alien to the human condition, dischord is foreign to the human purpose.
We've a lot of work to do. We had before as well.
Sing, Dance, and others will follow, we're all going to Liberty because there is no other option left. This was - is - will be - has been - (which logos is a verb of time?) the first and final conflict.
Once upon a time... = They all did their best to live happily ever after and realise they were just cheeky monkeys in a beautiful and exceedingly pretty garden with very special gardeners. Aesop told you all about them.
;-)
What can I say but from me personally thank you for taking the time to record the horrors of the terrorist attack to the train in Spain 2004.
It has become so easy to hone in on an atrocity via media in a country and likewise to pull out and move on and forget.
I like to believe in the wisdom of George Santayana 'Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it'.
Every person irrespective of creed, nation, wealth is a member of humanity. Any plight imposed on a person ought to be recorded in the hope that sometime attitudes can be changed.......
Quotation that might be of interest:
Point of View:
Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1638-1719)
'Because we do most things relying only on our own segacity we become self-interested, turn our backs on reason, and things do not turn out well.
As seen by other people this is sordid, weak, narrow and inefficient'
Ponder and Reflection..........
Michelle
The only thing we appear to learn from history is that we learn virtually nothing from history. So many innocents have died due to the war in Iraq, including the innocents in Madrid that it is difficult to estimate how many. The US administration has been guilty of deliberate actions to hide the identity and numbers of those Iraqis killed in Iraq. Lies were told in Spain, Washington, the UK and Ireland concerning the unlawfullness of the Iraq war and complicity of European states in this war. There has been virtually no acknowledgement that those countries responsible for so many deaths in Iraq are prepared to compensate any of their victims. As a further insult to the Iraqi people, there own oil resources are now being used to pay for the costs of the crimes committed against them. Financial compensation will not bring back the dead, or console the injured and bereaved, but financial penalties on the perpetrators might force them to think twice in the future before killing innocent people
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68068