WARS POSE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY:

In this article, I’m not going into the genesis of the Russia-Ukraine war. Neither do I debate if ‘de-Nazification’ in Ukraine carries any rationality. Or Ukraine battles the Russians to save its democracy.

And around the region from the onslaught of Putin’s autocracy.

But to briefly re-portray the very nature of war and the reckless role armed forces play in executing the deadly and destructive aftermaths of their offences and defences operations.

In these consequences, humans behind the machines indiscriminately kill fellow human beings. In reality, they bury their consciousness before the dead gets buried. Flattening the buildings a few moments before was live with people, old and young, children and toddlers who ran out for safety. They die in the rubble in cemeteries, seriously getting hurt and crushed during the dreadful moments. Survivors become homeless and refugees. In just a few minutes, the brutalities of war create miseries and calamities that people endure for a long time.

In the deafening din of almost non-stop shelling, birds cage themselves in the safe corners of bombed and razed buildings. They look up at a battleground in the sky.

As in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, most wars are triggered by one authority. Armed with their deadly military hardware, from fighter planes to rolling tanks delivering their gunfire, the brutal march of the combating forces opens with indiscriminate killings and destructions.

The whole scenario draws a horrible and devastating look. The war we can helplessly see live on TV screens and I-phones, a melodrama of catastrophes created with all the advanced and sophisticated artillery and machinery enacted by battle ‘heroes.’

It presents the cruel nature of war. Its tragic impacts are much more severe than accomplishing the stated and symbolic aims of self-defence and the ‘just’ motive.

Leaders can talk and talk and talk. But with mindset commitments, there is yet to be a resolution. War becomes a necessity because there is no trust in human nature.

Humanity suffers as nations enter senseless fights, hoping the war will bring peace. It does not.

They say wars are necessary when every other option becomes impractical. True?

Instead, the statement poses a real challenge to our ordinary intelligence, considering that war is not an option either.

Wars are crimes against humanity. The tradition of war eliminates our peace and safety, irrespective of our diverse nationalities. In this commitment, the contemporary global society, to which we all belong as one humanity, must resolve to do away with the menace of war. It is a blight on humanity in this age while we collectively pride ourselves on intelligence, knowledge, and scientific achievements.

The consequential resolution demands that every nation on Earth dissolves its armed forces. No young man or woman thus ever enters a profession that is knowingly a destructive and murderous job.

The resolution in red letters also demands the worldwide shutdown of manufacturing factories producing weapons of mass killing and disaster. With a sole focus on profit, these manufacturers supply weapons indiscriminately to both sides, the aggressor and the aggressed. The trillion-dollar war industry will collapse, but let it be to save humankind and our environment.

The concepts of no armed forces and no weapons manufacturing are not ideological, utopian, bizarre or new. Twenty-four countries globally, from Costa Rica to Ireland, already have demilitarized themselves, some of them decades ago. Nor do they have the manufacturing plants to produce all the soft and hardware contributing to the horrors of war. These wise nations present a world’s role model without violent, destructive, and deadly conflicts.

Let us do it for peace for ourselves and our environment.

-Promod Puri