Dear Editor,
I address this letter to the general public through you as many persons have asked for a clarification of the proposal to dialogue on the issue of the recent brutal attacks.
Dialogue in this instance is not about negotiations, it is about finding persons who are related to those who have chosen this violent path to express their grievances, or have knowledge of why this violence has been unleashed onto the nation, to share this with the nation or its representatives.
This dialogue presupposes the following attitudes: a real openness to listening to what these contact persons have to say; an attitude of recognition that maybe we have failed others in our pursuit of our own betterment; an attitude of willingness to address their legitimate concerns in a way that is both just, truthful and non-violent. Threats of “hang em high” do not help dialogue, but rather serves more to push violence even further.
The recent attack in Bartica should have alerted us that we are not experiencing banditry, but a message, whose root causes we need to get at as a nation because it is clearly not political or racial, but goes much deeper.
The acquisition of violent means to solve this problem would only lead to more violence and bloodshed as history has taught us.
Let us engage in a constructive dialogue before it is too late since we “are all involved, we shall all be consumed” or as Gandhi reminds us ” If we pursue the eye for an eye principle, then we will eventually all be blind”
My plea is to give dialogue a chance; it is not violent and costs very little.
Yours faithfully,
Fr Malcolm Rodrigues SJ
