I’m walking from Roboski to Ankara for peace!
HALIL SAVDA September 5, 2012

Here is the translation of the long walk for peace that have started on the 1st September, Halil Savda, conscientious objector, person in danger (more details on amnesty.org). Regarding the current situation of Turkey, we hope that this press release will appear at most in the foreign medias.

Kind regards,

(C.K.S & A.R)
 

I’m walking from Roboski to Ankara for peace!

We actually are living at a historic breaking point in the dilemma war/peace in Turkey. Since 30 years people are dying of war. Almost every day we have people dying and funerals in the mass media.

The human rights supporters, the ant-war people and the pacifists must find new ways of struggle for peace. Otherwise, this war will keep on sullying and causing suffering to us.

The Roboski massacre is a crime against humanity which is the fruit of the politic and the security tools that the government has introduced as being the only solutions to end the war. The Kurdish issue cannot be solved with an escalation of violence and the implementations of a politic of security but with more peace and freedom.

Of course more peace means more of everyday bread, as the bread, the sweat and the money of the people are given to weapons, soldiers, army, and other organizations of security. More security, more armament, then the less is the everyday bread. The will of “silencing the weapons” is a positioning against the definition of the structures used as tools of security by the state.

This is why, on the 1st of September, world day of peace, I will walk for PEACE the 1300 kms away from Roboski to Ankara in 40 days ! During this trip, I will share with the public the violations of the human rights existing in every cities I will cross.

War is not our fate and it mustn’t be! We can and we must stop this war!

I believe in the words of Gandhi : “Be the change that you want to see in the word !” I wanna start at my own place with this walk this change I would like to see in the world. I make this choice to respond to theses injustices that we live. I also understand by what I’ve been through in the aim of fighting for peace this quote from Martin Luther King who once said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”. I’m walking in the aim to bring this war to light and increasing the hopes of peace and calling to the different groups back to peace and life.

The idea of walking is not a new one:

In 1930, the spiritual and political leader of the independence movement of India, the Mahatma Gandhi, has walked 400 kms against the “salt tax” imposed by the British on the colonized, and he was then a pioneer of this active way of struggle against violence. More recently, in 1995, most of the Bosnian who used to take the track of the forest to reach the city of Tuzla in the aim of escaping from the Srebrenica massacre was then massacred by the Tchetniks.

From then on this road was named “the death road” and every years, a 3 days long walk is organized in order to turn this “death road” to a “peace road”.

About the road I’ll cross, soldiers, guerrillas and civilians keep on falling for 30 years now. I always kept unbroken my hopes for peace against war. I striven myself to bring my small contribution even if the price to pay was then to be sent to jail, as the flowering of peace on the soil of my country was then more important than my own future.
This time, I will hit the road to find peace in me.

I believe in the ability of a world freed from any violence. If I manage to bring my small contribution for the will of peace can be heard from a higher view and for this “death road” that rising in Roboski turn to a “life road”. Then, this will make me happy.

I’ll make a small step, we can make it become a big mach.

Halil Savda ( Conscientious Objector- Human Rights Activist)

(C.K.S and A.R)