October 2003 Letter from the URI Executive Director
October 17th, 2003 by sfuqua
The October 2003 letter from Charles Gibbs, Executive Director of the United Religions Initiative, reviewing the URI community’s observation of the International Day of Peace on September 21.
October 2003
Dear Friends in the URI Community,
Greetings of love and peace.
On Sunday, September 21, members of the URI community around the world observed the UN’s International Day of Peace. I’d like to share a moving, inspiring moment from the observance of the International Day of Peace at the UN, two days earlier on September 19. During a forum featuring dialogue between young people from around the world and UN Ambassadors for Peace, Jacqueline Murekatete, an 18-year-old refugee from the genocide in Rwanda now living in the US, addressed one of the ambassadors, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate in literature, Elie Weisel.
Jacqueline spoke of how powerful it had been for her to read his book, Night, because she had lived through the same experiences. A hush settled on the room as she described how, as a young girl, she had a happy childhood until one day she became
“the enemy” simply because she was a Tutsi. Suddenly, her people were called insects to be exterminated. Her mother, father, four brothers and two sisters were murdered. Why did this happen, she wanted to know.
People throughout the room wept as Mr. Weisel spoke to Jacqueline, recounting his 1999 Millennium Lecture, “The Perils of Indifference,” delivered at the White House. As he had finished the lecture, a young woman from Rwanda had asked him, “What do you have to tell me about indifference?” He turned to President Clinton and said, “Mr. President, you’d better answer that.”
The President was painfully silent for a moment, then said, “We could have prevented the genocide in Rwanda, but didn’t.”
“I don’t understand,” Mr. Weisel continued, once again addressing Jacqueline. “We knew about it and we did nothing. Indifference is never the answer. Indifference to evil is evil.”
He paused and repeated. “Indifference is never the answer. Nor is despair. You must write your story,” he told Jacqueline. “I will help you write your story. I pledge today before your friends and mine that I will help you write your story.”
Though they aren’t as dramatic as this meeting between a young woman who survived the genocide in Rwanda and a Nobel laureate in literature who survived the Holocaust, URI creates these sorts of encounters all over the world every day. Every day we create an antidote to indifference and despair. Every day we help people tell their story and hear another’s story, often for the first time. And, together, we write a new story of hope in a wounded world.
Thank you for your work for a better world and your support of URI.
Love,
Charles Gibbs
