There are silences that cry louder than bombs, pains that no word can really contain. In front of our eyes, without a break in our streets, a tragedy is written every day in the flesh of women and children there on the other side of the maps.
It is not a film, nor an ancient story: it is a contemporary shame, a naked barbarity, unbearable, that the world contemplates in an unbearable lethargy.
Every life broken, every innocence shattered in the dust of conflict is a scandal. A cry that we no longer hear, or that we refuse to hear. And yet... nothing is more unbearable than what we let do.
There are injuries without cards or flags: they travel in our collective forgetfulness.
There are silent screams that should crush against our consciences, break our indifferences.
There are tragedies that can no longer be ignored.
In Central Africa, in the fumes of Sudan, Sahel, Nigeria, in PalestineBlind wars save nothing: Women and children die first. Never accomplices. Always sacrificed.
And this vast world, from the soft comfort of our salons, looks elsewhere. The emotion is born on a flash, turned off on a strong picture carried by a television channel. Then we change the screen. Forget it.
But for them, the pain continues, tenacious, implacable.
In the Congo, Darfur and South Sudan, rape is no longer just violence: it is a method, a strategy, an instrument of sacrilegious destruction.
The body of women, sacred temple, becomes a field of ruin.
Behind every outrage, a community is fluttering, a people is wavering.
« Your bodies, sacred temples,
Profaned by men's dementia,
Weapons sharper than the bullet... »
These women are standing up. But the invisible scars they carry weigh heavier than any war.
Meanwhile, children supposed to play move in the emergency of bullets.
Some die in the rubble, others are carried away by violence, enlisted warriors despite them.
Their childhood is extinguished in a hurry: fear, famine, exile.
« Mothers, sisters, children...
Your tears are ours,
Your wounds are ours,
Your suffering is our suffering. »
Every child laughter stolen is a defeat against the hope of humanity.
Under the skies of the Sahel and in the villages of northern Nigeria, life is broken: jihadists, militias, bandits sow agony. Burning schools, displaced families, razed villages...
Girls are torn from adolescence, become sexual slaves or forced wives. We're thinking of high school girls in Chibok, but how many other anonymous missing women are suffering the same fate today, in the shadow of the media?
Children are caught, transformed into shields, suicide bombers: their laughter faints under the screaming of the Kalashnikovs.
Once again, barbarism does not stop at borders.
« I'm screaming with you.
I'm crying with you.
I'm standing with you.
And from that cry comes an oath... »
In Gaza, the West Bank, history replays in another setting, but with the same victims.
Bombardments don't know the uniforms. Mothers screaming on the ruins, children extracted without breath from the crushed concrete.
The Palestinian pain joins that of women in Central Africa, the Sahel, Nigeria and Sudan.
Same anger, same tears, same broken humanity.
« You are our mothers,
You are our sisters,
You are our daughters.
And even in the flames of war,
You are the guardians of the future. »
In both the North and South salons, we look at this chaos as a distant spectacle. One frowns in front of the screen. We're whispering « What a tragedy! » the sight of a Sudanese widow, a Palestinian mother, a Nigerian child.
Then we slide to the following: a game, an exit, a gadget. Compassion dies between two programs.
But for them, suffering does not stop. It's daily. Durable. Authentic.
And our indifference becomes a complementary wound; Silent complicity.
Let us together cry of grief, a cry of anger, a cry of brotherhood.
Proclaims high and strong:
- We refuse to turn women's bodies into weapons.
- We refuse that childhood be sacrificed on the altar of hatred.
- We refuse to allow indifference to stifle these tragedies.
« You're not the one who is dishonoring!
The dishonor belongs to the executioners,
The innocent murderers.
You are life,
You are the resistance,
You're the breath of tomorrow! »
What breaks the heart is not that it happens in Africa or Palestine.
This is happening on our only planet. Our shared house.
Every woman raped, every killed child, every stolen innocence, is a stain on our humanity.
Then don't shut up.
Let's not look away.
Let's believe with them.
Let's cry with them.
Let's stand by their side.
As long as only one woman is used as a weapon, as long as only one child is sacrificed, it is all humanity that is wavering.
