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Today's world is full of conflicts, because of this, more and more associations have been created to defend human rights. These call attention to the equivocal way in which treaties on human rights have been respected in the countries of South America. But all nationalities and groups of human beings are different, and no one seems to have taken this into account. In Peru, we have been subject for almost thirty years to disturbing terrorism from groups such as Shining Path and Tupac Amaru, who use such words as justice, poverty and human rights to justify the sacrifice of thousands of innocent lives. The total cost of this struggle - 50,000 innocent dead, 25,000 orphans and the isolation of our country from the rest of the world. Instead of answering for their crimes to the Peruvian government, the terrorists have sought asylum from governments such as Sweden, Belgium, Spain, France, The Netherlands and the United States. In these countries, they continue to enjoy freedom without being indicted for their crimes. One might ask: why don't the groups set up to defend human rights search for a way to help the orphans and the poor whom these terrorists have created in my country? Why don't they help the widows and orphans of dead soldiers? It is curious that these human rights groups only defend assassins and criminals: they defend the oppressors and never the oppressed. The civil population is always defenceless. No one has said that the rights of aggressors end as soon as they have violated the rights of their victims. It is easy to speak of problems and realities if one does not know the situations which have occurred. I do not venture to speak of ways in which other countries could attempt to resolve their differences. The true winners in all this are the media, who propagate news which only has the appearance of truth, and certainly never the whole truth. The absence of real culture within the media creates frantic consumerism which has a negative influence on both economics and politics. We, daughters of Madeleine Sophie, must renew our message in order to struggle for the spread of the eternal values which we have been taught. We must attempt to construct a future not only for the generations to come, but also for ourselves. - EMILIA ARIETTA |
