Blog

17/04/2020

As COVID 19 spreads round the globe, Justice & Peace Scotland vice chair Marian Pallister reflects on the plight of refugees and victims of conflict.

I have spent lockdown at home in Argyll. Will the Wood delivered a load of logs, the farm shop has kept me supplied with vegetables, both of which I was able to pay for on line, and my only foray to the Co-op was civilised if a little lacking in results. I have even been able to join Justice and Peace Scotland standing committee meetings by video conferencing. I can, if I’m sensible, stay well.

And in other people’s lives?

If you are a regular reader of Justice and Peace Scotland blogs, you will know that as an organisation, we have been closely involved with the young refugees in northern France. They have relatives in the UK but are held in a limbo that sees them struggle to survive in makeshift camps periodically destroyed by the French authorities. They are fed, clothed, and provided with sleeping bags and other necessities by volunteers – all of which can disappear in a few violently destructive minutes when police swoop. Now these youngsters are pushed even further from their goal to reunite with whatever relatives are still living after the conflicts they have escaped. The UK government has maintained a hostile approach to their situation.

The French COVID19 lockdown means a round up and dispersal to accommodation centres of those living rough around Calais and neighbouring ports.

In Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, the plight of the Rohingya refugees is a disaster waiting to happen. You’ll recall that Justice and Peace Scotland took SCIAF’s photographic exhibition of images taken in the camp to parishes across Scotland. I went with those images around my own diocese of Argyll and the Isles and shared the tears of those who engaged with the refugees’ plight.

Now, unable to go back home or to move on to a future settled life, the Rohingya, who escaped massacre in Myanmar, face COVID19, spreading across Asia and threatening the most vulnerable.

Most vulnerable? The undernourished, those with underlying health conditions, the poor living in overcrowded conditions. Cox’s Bazar to a T.

There are Syrian refugees in camps around the Mediterranean. In Turkey, they are ostracised as a burden on a failing state unable to care for its own virus-struck citizens. As country after country falls foul of COVID19, refugees (some welcomed, some in little better than concentration camps) are at the bottom of the pile when it comes to care, and at the front of the queue in terms of contracting the virus.

Just imagine the skeletal infants in Yemen being exposed to – after the bombs and the bullets and the starvation – the coronavirus.

Countries in the global South – Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, DR Congo – all now have COVID19 cases. Some of those countries shelter refugees. Not one has the medical infrastructure to efficiently combat the virus. Did we?

UNHCR and the world’s faith groups may offer the only care. This virus has made us hope for a better world when it has wrought its damage. Please God we will have a more humane and welcoming attitude to the world’s weakest. I pray for justice, and for peace.

10/04/2020

Bon Courage

Stefan Lunte, Secretary, Justice & Peace Europe, reflects on the effects of COVID19 in France. Weekly Blog.

I would like to greet you from Europe and offer the friendship of Justice and Peace here. After all, we are facing the same problems during this pandemic and we are all working for justice and peace. I’m sure we share some experiences.

In France, the first cases of COVID-19 were detected on 24 January. On 24 March we had 22,302 confirmed cases and 1,100 dead in hospital. There may be more dead in care homes and in general, but they are not documented yet. Since 17 March we have been living with relatively strict confinement measures, which are generally well respected. There are of course exceptions in some parts.

Health services are under severe strain. This is especially true for the east of the country and Paris. We haven’t had masks and other personal equipment, or ventilators. Nor has a wide spread campaign to test been possible because the necessary kits for testing have not been available.

Information is sometimes contradictory and the media has stirred heated conflicts around scientific debate. The best example is the question using Chloroquine as a medication in hospitals.

As in many other countries, people invent new forms of solidarity in order to distribute food and other necessary items. New forms of connectedness via social media are replacing missing physical contact. Radio stations, traditionally quite strong in France, have adapted their programmes and provide some source of comfort. Newspapers struggle more because of the restrictions on mail delivery and the confinement in general.

Two days before the confinement – I think you refer to it as ‘lockdown’ - a first round of local elections had been organised to renew city councils in about 30,000 French communes. However, the vote for new mayors couldn't go ahead. In the remaining 5,000 communes, a second round of the elections is necessary but has been postponed at least to the second half of June. In general, the elections suffered. On the eve of the poll, people were told to go to vote but restaurants and pubs were ordered to close. These conflicting messages led many people to stay at home.

Highbrow journals such as Revue des Deux Mondes Esprit, and Etudes refer to Albert Camus’ novel La Peste and compare the crisis responses of Western and Eastern societies - one stressing the freedom of the individual, the other its responsibility.

There are no masses, and with funerals being restricted in attendance and only held at cemeteries, the Church in France is limited to social media and initiatives like the ringing of all bells in France on the evening of the Annunciation Day on 25 March and lighting candles in homes.

People are no longer accustomed to stay at home for longer periods and apartments, especially in urban areas, are not designed for this. The real test for French society, as for you in Scotland, will be the impact of confinement measures after three or four weeks. Bon courage.

03/04/2020

COP26

COP26 has been postponed but that doesn't mean we should stop campaigning for climate justice. Marian Pallister reflects on the decision to move the climate conference due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Weekly blog.

It came as no surprise that COP26, planned to take place in Glasgow in November with over 26,000 delegates expected to attend, has been postponed. The UN emergency meeting at the beginning of April could really have had only one outcome, as the domino effect of COVID 19 knocks over country after country.

By November, some countries may well be back in business – God willing. But to invite thousands to come together to discuss one of the world’s most pressing issues while the other one still rages on would be foolish to say the least.

Justice and Peace Scotland has been involved in an interfaith initiative to welcome and support delegates. That initiative will obviously be on hold, too, until a date is announced for 2021.

But – and it is a very big but – none of this means that campaigning on the climate emergency stutters to a halt. Why should it? Let’s remember that while many thousands across the world may die as a result of the spread of COVID 19, it is the planet itself that is under threat. It is our common home that will die if we don’t act now. COP26 was to have been – will be – the most important climate conference to date. Now Justice and Peace Scotland, a campaigning organisation with so many committed supporters, aims to keep climate at the top of the political agenda and in everyone’s minds.

We cannot be complacent because the current lockdown has cleaned up our air pollution and cleared our waters with almost miraculous speed.

Whatever our grand intentions while we remain in social isolation, as soon as the starting gun is fired, the fuel-guzzlers will race onto our roads again. Cruise liners will sail the seven seas, polluting the cities they visit and the seas they glide through. Airlines will sardine thousands into their planes and propel them skywards once more.

They say the oil industry is on its knees right now, and we’ve all noticed the drastic drop in petrol prices. But this is an industry with the cunning to get back on its feet to fight another day.

We are also up against the likes of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a
UK-based think tank founded by Nigel Lawson, a self-confessed climate change denier. In February of this year, the foundation said on its website that there could be “astronomical” costs for the UK economy to reach the government’s net-zero target. Surely there will be astronomical costs of a different sort if we don’t reach it?
There are those whose fossil fuel investments pit them against renewable energy. Those who say Sir David Attenborough is wrong about the state of the Arctic.

We say differently. All last year, Justice and Peace Scotland campaigned for climate justice. The speakers at our September 2019 conference offered a host of evidence. Pope Francis has called the climate emergency a “challenge of civilisation”.

COP26 off, so the game’s a bogey? No chance. Let’s fight on and use this time of isolation to make our voices heard on the need for drastic change

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