Krunoslav Sukić. Award Nagrada za promicanje mirotvorstva, nenasilja i ljudskih prava.

Friends about Kruno

Kruno was a Cleaner. A tireless Cleaner. A smiling one. An outstanding one. Unrecognized, of course, but that didn't border him at all. A Cleaner of all those paths that connect us with the Meaning. Someone will say with God, someone else might say with the Light or with the Transcendent. I only know that these are the paths that take us to Where They Know All About Us, even though we know nothing about them...

 

Lob der Langsamkeit[1] der Friedensstifter

Christof Ziemer: Für Kruno

 

Sie sind langsam, sie sind nicht schnell,

sie sind langsam, aber sie sind nicht träge,

nicht faul, nicht nachlässig, nicht schwach.

Sie sind langsam, aber von einer anderen,

ganz andersartigen Langsamkeit:

Sie sind leicht, nicht schwer,

sie sind leise, nicht laut,

sie sind behutsam, nicht zudringlich,

sie sind geschickt, nicht schwerfällig,

sie sind sanftmütig, nicht gewalttätig.

 

Sie lassen sich Zeit.

Sie überlegen reiflich, bevor sie über etwas entscheiden.

Sie mögen keine vorschnellen Antworten.

Wenn sie reden, brauchen sie Zeit,

wenn andere reden, haben sie Zeit.

Sie wissen, dass die Dinge Zeit brauchen, um zu wachsen.

Sie wissen, dass die Dinge nicht reifen können,

wenn wir nicht auch selbst reifen.

Sie lieben den aufmerksamen Dialog.

 

Sie gehen ihren Weg – langsam, aber entschlossen.

Sie ändern nicht dauernd ihre Meinung.

Sie hassen leere Worte und blinden Aktivismus.

Sie mögen keine Projekte, mit denen Menschen unter Druck gesetzt werden,

etwas zu tun, was sie nicht wollen.

Sie handeln nicht sofort -

es sei denn jemand braucht sie sofort.

Wenn sie handeln, dann mit Achtsamkeit.

Ihr Leitstern ist nicht der Erfolg, sondern das Gewissen.

 

Sie lassen zu, dass andere sie aufhalten

mit ihren Irrtümern und Fehlern.

Zuhören ist ihnen wichtiger als Urteilen.

Sie müssen nicht auf ihrem Recht bestehen,

aber sie können es nicht ertragen, wenn andere Unrecht erleiden.

Sie freuen sich mit den Fröhlichen und weinen mit den Weinenden.[2]

Und wenn es nötig ist, dann wissen sie ebenso zu schweigen,

wie die Freunde Hiobs, die mit ihm auf der Erde saßen

sieben Tage und sieben Nächte

but they never said a mumbling word,[3] 

denn sie sahen, dass der Schmerz sehr groß war.[4]

 

Wenn sie an Gott glauben,

dann suchen sie Gott nicht

im Wind oder im Erdbeben oder im Feuer,

sie finden ihn in dem stillen, sanften Sausen.[5]

Oder wie ein großer Rabbi gesagt hat:

wenn der Messias kommt, daß er nicht mit Gewalt die Welt verändern wolle,

sondern nur um ein Geringes sie zurechtsstellen werde.[6]

Dieser Art ist die Langsamkeit der Friedensstifter.

 

 

A question poses itself: WHO are these people we call peacemakers?

Goran Božićević, Speech at the Award ceremony, December 10, 2009

A question poses itself: WHO are these people we call peacemakers? Peace activists. The people we are celebrating today. Or perhaps, more precisely – the people we are starting to publicly acknowledge in Croatia. Because, until now, we never have.

I need to say a few words about Kruno, the man after whom this award is named. How do I, and what do I tell those people who don't yet know, young people, people who belong to a future time, or a space unaccustomed to the practices of peacemaking?

What does it mean to say that this award bears the name of Krunoslav Sukić?

Founder of the Centre for Peace?

An activist who consistently strove towards the protection and promotion of human rights?

Conscientious objector?

Philosopher?

Teacher, activist, humanist?

Don't get me wrong if I mark all these descriptions as: irrelevant.

Correction: Interpret this in any way you want, or feel like doing.

Get angry. Let's be ourselves.

Because this is what brings us closer to Kruno.

Are we trying to give out the following recipe:

Establish a peace organization that deals with human rights as well, and all in a nonviolent manner. Make that organization grow into something truly great and valuable. Let that growth be natural, but by no means easy. Work tirelessly and consistently, educate yourselves and others, contemplate.

 And?

And what?

By this you become a hero whose name will be praised, at least among those who recognize true values?

You don't.

For this I give you a deserved applause. But something more is needed. Make no mistake – you certainly are great people for living and acting this way, In the world we live in today this is surely an exceptional achievement.

But how does one's name give light to an award, a light to some other great people? I cannot provide a recipe for that. All the recipes I can think of are banal. They sound logical, but they have no true meaning. They are no good.

I can tell you why I admired Kruno. Why this award is more exquisite than many of us are able to see. And why I am inclined to believe that God took him from us because he needed him for some higher purpose, a purpose which here and now we are perhaps only beginning to try to comprehend. 6 years ago I interviewed some 30 people on the topic of Dealing With the Past in Croatia. Exceptional people, leaders of the civil scene and beyond. Smart, courageous, well educated, eloquent.

Out of all these interviews, the one with Kruno impressed me the most. A dear colleague. A friend. I recall standing agape like a child, listening to him. 

“Therefore, it is undeniable that we have the need, many of us, including myself, to face this past in a way which will be new, or perhaps, which will be something more than just dealing with the past. It is essential to face it publicly, because in my own personal way I can face it every day. My problem is that my way of dealing with the past is at odds with the one which appears self-evident and unquestionable, nationally correct, nationally affirmative. The way I see it, the problem is with those who have their own, peculiar story to tell, and who don’t care whether or not that story will fit into the predefined models of collective memory and collective coping. There are so many imposed patterns of dealing with the past, safeguarded by ideology and current political establishment. I think this need is much more apparent on what we might call social levels, than it is on levels we might call political or national. This, I think, is the biggest problem. We understand ourselves as a nation, but despite this broadened self-understanding, we are a very young nation, or, to put it in a way that sounds more painful to national pride, a belated nation. Dealing with the past should be realistic in substance, we should be able to see ourselves as individuals, as family, as kin, realistically. I’m afraid this is problematic, because of the extent to which we are bound by the dictates of national history.”(Excerpt from the transcript of the 17 Feb 2003 interview)

As it appears – after all, this is how we termed it, how we declared and announced it – we gathered today to celebrate human rights activists, peace-building activists, peace educators, trade-union and student activists, non-violent actions, to name a few terms and labels we tend to use. I won’t contradict this. But I won’t agree either.

Because, if that was all there was to it, this award and all the work we’ve done would have no particular meaning, nor could our conscience be clean before Kruno.

Because, you see, Kruno – even though he was all these things I listed – he was something else. He was a Cleaner. A tireless Cleaner. A smiling one. An outstanding one. Unrecognized, of course, but that didn’t bother him at all.

A Cleaner of all those paths that connect us with the Meaning. Someone will say with God, someone else might say with the Light or with the Transcendent. I only know these are the paths that take us to Where They Know All About Us, even though we know nothing about them.

Kruno was a brilliant Cleaner. And the paths he cleaned are not only hidden, but we keep covering them up with piles of garbage, nonsense and meaninglessness and violence, empty words and non-meanings, pretense, hypocrisy, arrogance, false idols, and other useless whatnot.

Kruno was one of those who maintained our connection to Meaning constantly, tirelessly, and joyfully.

Besides, the same applies to all who are nominated for the Award that bears his name. It seems to me like the finger of a giant hand is pointed at all the nominees this year. Invisible, of course, because it is rude to point fingers.

Yet today our fingers are pointed at Zdenka, Jaroslav, Ana and Otto, Independent Student Initiative. We point our fingers at Ladislav, too, as the first in a series of acknowledged Cleaners.

And I am happy today, very happy. Fulfilled. Because I see our friend watching us, and he is smiling. It took us long enough, but we are finally starting.

I see the dance of colorful spotlights, playfully flitting over these exceptional people today.

I recognize these spotlights because they are of Kruno’s making.

The first spotlight is Resistance. That is to say that in the World of nongovernmental organizations today there is no one who isn’t familiar with projects, project proposals, agenda, plans, strategies, methodologies, beneficiaries, expected outcomes and whatnot.

And Kruno was not familiar with those. He was lousy when it came to projects, organizational development and things like that. He was bad at it, yes. Just as a hawk is bad at running. And yet, no one would ever think of calling a hawk a bad runner. Even though he is a bad runner. Kruno was one of the last hopes of our four generations – one of the few Cleaners, or Peacemakers if you will, who just couldn’t be molded and pigeonholed. He couldn’t. Can we finally acknowledge that as an outstanding quality today?

The second spotlight is Presence. This is the one that illustrates the moment when Kruno attends a meeting. There are many of his female colleagues present at the meeting – activists, women. And another man, a politician let’s say, it doesn’t matter. And at one point Kruno says to this man: “Please stop addressing only me. You give me the impression that, besides yourself, for you I am the only one present at the meeting. Please address my colleagues as well.”

The third spotlight is Cleaner, under the guise of a prankster, seen by many as the guise of the troublemaker. An example is when Kruno, at a large national meeting of peacemakers from Croatia, starts speaking Serbian. Out of the blue. There’s laughter naturally, but also embarrassment and bewilderment. And Kruno keeps talking in Serbian. Soon he stops, when he realizes we are all far behind him. He says: “It’s been so long since I last spoke Serbian.” And he got the message through. We are not free. We are not, yet we pretend to be more liberated than we are. And we are imprisoning ourselves from within. We do not need to be forced from without.

The fourth spotlight is Solemn, one known only to Kruno and me, memorized when Kruno and I sat in our pajamas until the small hours, looking outside the window of our friend Margaret’s house, watching the snow-covered Stockholm in its holiday atmosphere, rejoicing in the fact that two of our female colleagues, Katarina and Vesna, were chosen, out of all people, to receive a big award for their work, an award like this one, but slightly different. We were talking about all kinds of things. Or were we? On second thought, it wasn’t really all kinds of things. It all revolved around Meaning, Life, Peace and the lack of it. Hm.

We ourselves toss a lot of odds and ends on the paths that lead us to the Meaning.

That’s why I feel so fulfilled, for I am here today with men and women Cleaners. The First-rate ones.

Because Kruno brought me here today to finally meet the great Jaroslav, to embrace the tireless Zdenka, to tell you how proud I am to be Ana’s and Otto’s friend and admirer, and how much easier it is to live in a country that has an Independent Student Initiative such as this one.

And to tell you how I still remember the agony I felt, the toil and the sweat, when Ladislav made me write down my good qualities in a workshop in Pakrac in 1993.

And this is something we all find difficult, don’t we?

To admit that

Our biggest fear is not that we are not up to the task.

Our biggest fear is that our power is beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness

That we fear the most.

I want to thank all of you ladies and gentlemen Cleaners, friends of Centre for Peace, of an endeavor important not only to me, all of you who gathered here today to honor Kruno. I can see some paths today. Much more clearly, thanks to you. And believe me, I need it very much these days. We all need it, and that’s why this award is so important to us.

 

Promotion cannot be more important than protection of individuals and people

Snježana Kovačević, colleague from the Center for Peace  

I can still clearly remember that afternoon of the fall of '96 when I met you in the Office of Gundulićeva 34. Your kind welcome and profound effort to introduce yourself and the Peace Centre and to find out more about me was crucial for me to gain confidence toward the Peace Centre. I gave notice to my previous job and started working for the Peace Centre within only a few days.

Talking to you, while we were working together shoulder by shoulder, was never superficial. Even when we talked about making coffee or tee, we were going through different parts of the world talking about different cultures and remembering different people, habits and traditions. I was always able to learn from your rich treasury of knowledge.

Today, when I see apples, I remember how you used to cut them and shared with everyone. Even the last apple was at disposal to whoever wanted. 
 
But most of all I will keep in memory your attitude toward protection of human. You always persisted and advocated the importance of calling our programme PROTECTION and promotion of Human Rights rather then Promotion and protection… as someone officially named it earlier. You were saying: “Promotion cannot be more important than protection of individuals and people”. Your attitude about it was always visible in practice. You had always time to listen to a person in need and look for ways to help, to answer the need…  

Having you around… I felt calm and safe wherever we were. Only your presence brought peace.

During evictions that were unpleasant and painful, you had the right words to say to the people. The family received empathy and it was easier to deal with the process.

 In the courtroom, you would sit where no one dared, closer to the witness, taking out your note book that was always at hand. You provided support to the witness who had no protection.   

In street actions you would approach every person, whether it was a child or an older man, reminding all of us that each person is equally important and worth of respect and attention.  

To you, the Teacher of Philosophy and Literature, to you… one of the first and the greatest activists of human rights and peace in this area who was never “beneath dignity” to stand on streets during cold weather and collect signatures, share peace messages, make finger prints protesting against armed conflict in Iraq… For the sake of civic activism nothing was hard to you and all the work you committed and dedicated, better than any of us.      

You talked about yourself as an atheist, later agnostic… However, talking to you about God and belief had always been deep and fundamental, full of questions and without prejudices or fears. We had the same favourite, the apostle Paul. You admired real and authentic Christians and you gladly read and listened to their messages and sermons. You told me that again on that Friday when I saw you the last time. You were pleased your working hours were over and you were rejoicing to the weekend.

I am also aware, my dear colleague, that you had worked long hours on texts, weighing every word and paying attention to word order in sentence, taking care that the message is clear and deep enough. I know you would fix this text of mine as well…

But I also know you were accepting each one of us without hidden motive to correct or to persuade to think like you.

Thank you, dear Kruno, for being a part of my life.

Thank you, dear God, for showing to me what a true peacemaker looks alike.