Islanders call on Abbott and Bishop to visit low lying Pacific nations

MEDIA RELEASE
Sydney, Thursday, 3rd Oct 2013
Islanders call on Abbott and Bishop to visit low lying Pacific nations
Australian Islander Community seeks stronger climate action in line with latest IPCC Report.

"The very worst fears of Pacific Island Communities in Australia have been confirmed in the latest IPCC report published last week," said Pacific Calling Partnership spokesperson Maria Tiimon Chi-fang speaking at a community gathering following the release of the fifth assessment report (AR5) of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"We would like to see Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop visit the Pacific’s low-lying island nations during the term of this Parliament," affirmed Ms Tiimon Chi-fang, an I-Kiribati woman living in Sydney whose life was featured in the award-winning SBS documentary The Hungry Tide.

"Meeting the I-Kiribati may bring them to re-evaluate the Government’s reduction commitments to bring them in line with the climate science."

"Australia’s commitment to reduce our emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020, is by no means an adequate response to the evidence," emphasised Ms Tiimon Chi-fang, who is community outreach officer for the Pacific Calling Partnership. "Nor is it appropriate or sufficient given Australia’s support for the Majuro Declaration on Climate Leadership, launched in September at the 2013 Pacific Island Forum."

"Pacific Islanders increasingly feel that a mere 5% reduction in Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions puts the future of their islands at risk. They feel insecure about their futures, and are disappointed at the clear contradiction between the Government’s support for the Majuro Declaration, and their lack of effective climate change policy."

"I urge Prime Minister Abbott to reconfirm his support for the Majuro Declaration, and substantially reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions,' she said.

"Australia has a moral responsibility in two parts. First to Pacific Island neighbours who - whilst having not contributed to the problem, will suffer most from its effects. Secondly, there is also a responsibility to Australian children and grandchildren, who will inherit the effects of our lack of action."

"I call on our Australian Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister to visit my home country," Ms Tiimon Chi-fang, now an Australian citizen, said. "Not until they can see the human face of climate change will they fully understand the consequences of their inaction for my people. Cutting $4.5 billion from the overseas aid budget, as well as cutting out key climate change policy infrastructure in Australia, makes me question the Australian Government’s commitment to the survival of our Pacific Island nations.”

IPCC Assessment Report 5 ("AR5")

In AR5 a total of 209 lead authors and 50 Review Editors from 39 countries have presented evidence that: "the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years".

These unprecedented levels of … "greenhouse gases contributed [to] a global mean surface warming in the range of 0.5°C to 1.3°C over the period 1951−2010", and higher projections for sea level rise, the range for which is now projected at 26 to 82 cm, up from the 18 to 59 cm in the 2007 report.

The report concludes that: "continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions."


http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session36/p36_doc3_approved_spm.pdf


For interview or comment contact:-

Jill Finnane: 0409-640-366 or Sean Cleary: 0403-434-512

Publishable PCP images for usage related to this release are available at:
- www.erc.org.au/pcp/media
- some video also viewable: www.youtube.com/pacificcalling

Pacific Calling Partnership - www.erc.org.au/pcp
Since 2006 the ERC initiative Pacific Calling Partnership (PCP), has worked to promote knowledge of and action with the people of the low-lying Pacific Island communities most threatened by the effects of climate change. PCP delegations, with representation from Australia & from affected low-lying Pacific Island communities, have participated in UN Climate summits: COP13 Bali; COP15 Copenhagen; COP16 Cancun; COP17 Durban & COP18 Doha.



--
Sean Cleary, Education Officer, Edmund Rice Centre
15 Henley Rd(PO Box 2219) Homebush West, NSW 2140
Ph 1: (02) 8090 1976 -- Ph 2: (07) 3103 7376 -- Fx: (02) 8762 4220
E: seanc@erc.org.au -- W: www.erc.org.au

Words of Wisdom

It is a bigger miracle to be patient and refrain from anger than it is to control the demons which fly through the air.
John Cassian

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

‘Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.’
Thomas A. Edison

‘Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. ‘
Arundhati Roy Public Power in the Age of Empire

‘We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.’
Martin Luther King Jr.

‘We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion.’
Mother Teresa The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living

‘Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his ‘right mind.’ p. 31’
Thomas Merton, On Non-Violence

‘In the use of force, one simplifies the situation by assuming that the evil to be overcome is clear-cut, definite, and irreversible. Hence there remains but one thing: to eliminate it. Any dialogue with the sinner, any question of the irreversibility of his act, only means faltering and failure. Failure to eliminate evil is itself a defeat. Anything that even remotely risks such defeat is in itself capitulation to evil. The irreversibility of evil then reaches out to contaminate even the tolerant thought of the hesitant crusader who, momentarily, doubts the total evil of the enemy he is about to eliminate. p. 21’
Thomas Merton On Non-Violence

‘The first principal of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.’
Mahatma Gandhi On Non-Violence

Bishop Hurley letter to Tony Abbott - Bishop of Darwin

The Leader of the Opposition
The Hon. Tony Abbott MHR
Parliament House
RG109
CANBERRA ACT 2600
16 August 2013


Dear Mr. Abbott,

I have just returned to my office from the Wickham Point and the Blaydin detention centres here in Darwin.

Sadly, I have been involved with detention centres since the creation of the Woomera centre, followed by Baxter and now, over the last six years, with the various and expanding centres here in Darwin.

I experienced once again today, the suffocating frustration of the unnecessary pain we inflict on one another. I celebrated Holy Mass with a large number of Vietnamese families, made up of men, women, children and women waiting to give birth. The celebration was prayerful and wonderful, until the moment of parting.

I was reminded of something a young man said to me during one of my visits to Woomera, all those years ago. I was saying something about freedom.

He replied, "Father, if freedom is all you have known, then you have never known freedom."

I sensed the horrible truth of that statement again today.

I was also conscious of that beautiful speech made when the UNHCR accepted the Nobel Prize in 1981. In part it states,

"Throughout the history of mankind people have been uprooted against their will. Time and time again, lives and values built from generation to generation have been shattered without warning. But throughout history mankind has also reacted to such upheavals and brought succour to the uprooted. Be it through individual gestures or concerted action and solidarity, those people have been offered help and shelter and a chance to become dignified, free citizens again. Through the ages, the giving of sanctuary had become one of the noblest traditions of human nature.

Communities, institutions, cities and nations have generously opened their doors to refugees."

I sit here at my desk with a heavy heart and a deep and abiding sadness, that the leaders of the nation that my father, as an immigrant, taught me to love with a passion, have adopted such a brutal, uncompassionate and immoral stance towards refugees.

I imagine he would be embarrassed and saddened by what has occurred.

It occurred to me today that neither the Prime Minister or yourself know the story of any one of these people.

Neither do the great Australian community.

I find that it is quite impossible to dismiss these people with all the mindless, well-crafted slogans, when you actually look into their eyes, hold their babies and feel their grief.

There has been a concerted campaign to demonise these people and keep them isolated from the great Australian public. It has been successful in appealing to the less noble aspects of our nation's soul and that saddens me. I feel no pride in this attitude that leads to such reprehensible policies, on both sides of our political spectrum.

I cringe when people draw my attention to elements of our history like The White Australia Policy and the fact that we didn't even count our Indigenous sisters and brothers until the mid 1900's. I cringe and wish those things were not true. It is hard to imagine that we as a nation could have done those things.

I judge the attitude of our political leaders to refugees and asylum seekers to be in the same shameful category as the above mentioned. In years to come, Australians who love this country will be in disbelief that we as a nation could have been so uncharacteristically cruel for short term political advantage.

It seems that nothing will influence your policy in this matter, other than the political imperative, but I could not sit idly by without feeling complicit in a sad and shameful chapter of this country which I have always believed to be better than that.

Sometime I would love to share with you some of the stories I have had the privilege of being part of over the years. I am sure you would be greatly moved. Sadly, for so many, such a moment will be all too late.

Yours Sincerely,

Bishop E. Hurley.

Most Rev Daniel Eugene Hurley DD

The Chancery of the Diocese

Postal Address: GPO Box 476, Darwin, 0801
Phone: (08) 8942 6000
admin@darwin.catholic.org.au

Syria: Archbishop's speech in the House of Lords

Thursday 29th August 2013
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, delivered the following speech in the House of Lords on the situation in Syria:
My Lords, I very much welcome the opportunity to have been able to speak later in this debate because of the extraordinary quality of many of the contributions that have been made, and how much one can learn by listening to them. Like many noble Lords I have some experience in the region, partly from this role that I have and recent visits and contacts with many faith leaders of all three Abrahamic faiths, and also through 10 years of, from time to time, working on reconciliation projects.
I don’t intend to repeat the powerful points that have been made on international law which is itself based on the Christian theory of Just War, and that has been said very eloquently. But I want to pick up a couple of points - first is, it has been said, quite rightly, that there is as much risk in inaction as there is in action. But as in a conflict in another part of the world, a civil conflict in which I was mediating some years ago, a general said to me “we have to learn that there are intermediate steps between being in barracks and opening fire”. And the reality is that until we are sure that all those intermediate steps have been pursued, Just War theory says that the step of opening fire is one that must only be taken when there is no possible alternative whatsoever, under any circumstances. Because, as the noble Lord Lord Alli just said very clearly and very eloquently, the consequences are totally out of our hands once it has started. And some consequences we can predict – we’ve heard already about the Lebanon and about Iran, particularly the effect that an intervention would cause on the new government in Iran as it is humiliated by such an intervention.
But there is a further point, talking to a very senior Christian leader in the region yesterday, he said “intervention from abroad will declare open season on the Christian communities”. They have already been devastated, 2 million Christians in Iraq 12 years ago, less than half a million today. These are churches that don’t just go back to St Paul but, in the case of Damascus and Antioch, predate him. They will surely suffer terribly (as they already are) if action goes ahead. And that consequence has to be weighed against the consequences of inaction. In civil wars, those who are internal to the civil conflict fight for their lives, necessarily. Those who are external have a responsibility, if they get involved at all, to fight for the outcome, and that outcome must be one which improves the chances of long term peace and reconciliation. If we take action that diminishes the chance of peace and reconciliation, when inevitably a political solution has to be found, whether it’s near term or in the long term future, then we will have contributed to more killing and this war will be deeply unjust.
In consequence my Lords, I feel that any intervention must be effective in terms of preventing any further use of chemical weapons. I’ve not yet heard that that has been adequately demonstrated as likely. That it must effectively deal with those who are promoting the use of chemical weapons. And it must have a third aim which is: somewhere in the strategy, there must be more chance of a Syria and a Middle East in which there are not millions of refugees and these haunting pictures are not the stuff of our evening viewing.
- See more at: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5125/syria-archbishops-speech-in-the-house-of-lords#sthash.Q9DJc6g2.JuDaohTe.dpuf

The gift in our hand - Joan Chittister osb from Aspects of the Heart

To know our gifts is to know our role in life. We are what we are. But the gift of self unfolds as we go, often slowly, always with surprise. It can take years before it becomes clear—the real gift that is hidden within us. Finding the gifts that God has given you takes courage; it takes risk; it takes exploration; it takes failure as we stumble from one arena to the other. But in the end what I get back is the wholeness of myself.

We all come with a gift in our hand designed to make life a better place. The only question is whether we spend it on others or only on ourselves.

It is learning that the gifts we have been given are given for the rest of the human community that makes us more human ourselves. Everyone does some things better than other things. What I have to give is always that one thing that is most needed in every situation because no one else can give it. The obligation is to pour it out like oil on the head of the universe.

Don’t be afraid to follow the dreams of your heart. They are the sign of what should be, of what you must do to be whole, of what you down deep really believe the world must taste to be true to itself.

Without you and me and our little gift, the world will never be filled up. Asked to write a letter to the London Times on ‘What’s wrong with the world?’ GK Chesterton wrote, ‘Dear Sirs, I am. Yours truly, GK Chesterton.’ Clearly, what we are asked to give is only what we are—and that is more than nothing.

Pax Christi Australia deplores indifference towards the plight of Asylum Seeker Refugees

Pax Christi Australia, a member of the International Movement for Peace, Pax Christi International, met for its National Conference from August 23-25, 2013 held at the Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education, Homebush West, with members from Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria with visiting members from Aotearoa New Zealand, West Papua and the United States. The theme of the conference was Peacemaking: an alternative narrative.

The assembly, on this Refugee and Migrant Sunday, strongly deplores the indifference that many Australians, including the media and politicians, have fallen into. Many Australians have the belief that we are a generous and fair minded people but this is not reflected in the cruel and inhuman treatment of vulnerable people who have been driven from their homes as a result of oppression and conflicts, some of which Australia has been, and continues to be, involved in.

Pax Christi Australia acknowledges that people who seek asylum are our brothers and sisters. It strongly refutes the language and false narrative that is used by sections of the media and by politicians that asylum seekers are illegal, which they are not; that they are jumping a queue, which does not exist; that people seeking asylum by boat are a threat to Australia’s border security, which is not true; and, that we are being overwhelmed by an influx of asylum seekers, which is not the case.

Finally, Pax Christi Australia is deeply concerned by the lack of leadership shown by politicians and a number of religious leaders who by their language or silence leave Australians morally diminished.


Contact
Father Claude Mostowik, msc, President, Pax Christi Australia 0411 450953
Father Pancras Jordan, op, Convenor, Pax Christi Queensland 0415 461 620





Bruce Petty The Age July 8, 2013



For I was hungry, while you had all you needed.

I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water.

I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported.

I needed clothes, but you needed more clothes.

I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness.

I was in prison, and you said I was getting what I deserved.

(RESV—Richard E. Stearns Version in Richard Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel p. 59, Kindle Edition.

Requiem for the Children of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was a strange summer day, that humid 6th day of August in 1945, while I was sitting by myself just across the street from my home in Nahant, Massachusetts.

I vividly remember the moment ~ I was gazing towards the south, towards the Atlantic ocean and suddenly I felt a shudder from deep within myself.

It was a momentary sense of a deep collective loss and shortly after that I saw my twin brother excitedly running towards me from our home across the street.

He told me that he had just heard on the radio that we had dropped an Atomic bomb on Hiroshima and that thousands had died in the blast. (Actual deaths were 140,000 of which 60% were burned alive) Three days later, like a dagger in humanity's heart, it happened again in Nagasaki. (Actual deaths were 80,000 of which 90% were burned alive ~ It is estimated that out of every 6 deaths in the bombings, 5 were civilians and 1 was military). See Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb fact sheet ~ overall death listings which does not include at least 23 American POWS who were captured Naval aviators being held in Hiroshima and not acknowledged or reported by the U.S. until the late 1970's. http://www.domlife.org/Justice/Disarmament/bombfactsheet.pdf










I felt very sad for a deep soul connected part of me innately knew the world would never be the same and I also sensed I had felt, at that exact moment in time, the collective loss of thousands of Japanese children, like myself at that time, who were incinerated, maimed and left homeless by these unnecessary barbaric attacks. I also had a profound feeling that something very ominous for humanity had just happened ~ and I was right!

We now had the means to completely destroy the human race ~ particularly evidently the yellow and brown races.