An Open Letter to President Biden…
NOBEL LAUREATES, 1 Feb 2021
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service
Press Release from Peace People – 25 Jan 2021
… to Address the Following Requests
Dear Mr President,
Please accept my congratulations and best wishes with your work as President.
I have two urgent requests to ask of you.
1) Free Julian Assange
Please do all you can to free Julian Assange and let him go home to his family. He has served long enough; his family hankers for his presence and for his punishment to end.
Northern Ireland Peace activist Mairead Maguire (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1976) in front of the US Consulate General in Belfast on 24 Jan 2021.
2) Save the Children of Yemen
Your foreign policy is causing death and starvation of thousands of Yemeni children as the ports are blocked and people cannot get food. Do not let history record again that powerful governments played politics with little children’s lives. I implore you Mr. President–along with the UK government–to immediately stop the war on the Yemeni people. Please end the arms sales to Saudi Arabia and make peace. Sadly more and more Yemeni children are being starved by warring parties whose blockades and bomb attacks have and continue to decimate their country.
Millions of children across Yemen face serious threats due to malnutrition, in particular, and the lack of basic health services. All these threats are caused by the ongoing war and hostilities in the country (file photo).
© UNICEF/UN0276430/Almahbashi
Please learn from Northern Ireland, and solve this horror of war on Yemen, through dialogue.
Thank you.
_________________________________________
Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book The Vision of Peace (edited by John Dear, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com.
The Peace People began in 1976 as a protest movement against the ongoing violence in Northern Ireland. Its three founders were Mairead Maguire, Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown. Over 100,000 people were involved in the initial movement and two of the founders, Mairead and Betty, received the Nobel Peace Prize for that year. Since its inception, the organization has been committed to building a just, peaceful society through nonviolent means – a society based on respect for each individual, and that has at its core the highest standards of human and civil rights. www.peacepeople.com
Tags: Assange, Biden, Mairead Maguire, Yemen
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 1 Feb 2021.
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Assange has committed no crime and should have served no time in prison. Read the powerful article by Nils Metzler, UN rep on torture and human rights, and the false “evidence” which has kept Julian incarcerated for so long, while journalists do not bother to report the facts.
Thank you, Mairead Maguire, for this clarion call to “do the right thing.” It’s a simple appeal to humanity and good sense. I’m glad you don’t distract attention with meaningless attacks on the former US Administration, Trump and his supporters, etc..
One man’s suffering–because he dared to “speak truth to power,” as Assange did–is fair warning to all of us about the way “freedom of speech” is now imperiled. Assange acted courageously to reveal the truths about America’s endless wars in the Middle East.
One man’s suffering…and the children of Yemen suffering because of fratricidal wars…because those who should know better, those in positions of power, refuse to “dialogue.”
Weren’t the great spiritual teachers, the great thinkers, philosophers and artists–all trying to teach us how to talk and listen to one another, to find common ground in our shared humanity? Our vain striving after excessive wealth and power endangers the Earth itself. Now, a Plague infects the air we breathe. Can we come to our senses, and higher senses, before we are lost in the labyrinths we are creating?