I extend my heartfelt thanks to the good people in Malaysia who have taken the trouble to invite me to be a speaker at your Forum. Unfortunately, owing to my own program, I am unable to be there in person, but I am there with you in spirit to ensure that this Forum is a success. A special word of thanks to the Founder of The Criminalise War Club, (CWC), Her Excellency Tun Dr Siti Hasmah, for extending this special invitation to me. To the Founder of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War, His Excellency. Tun Dr Mahathir and to other distinguished speakers, members of the public and to the members of this unique Criminalise War Club, my warmest greetings. You are all aware that I am a victim of war. In 1972, when I was a 9-year old, I was burned because of war. I survived that horror, although many thousands of my countrymen and women did not. I went through many hardships, loneliness, pain and even perhaps anger. However that did not consume me.
world and don’t help anybody. War causes nothing but suffering. For that reason I am in tune with the Kuala Lumpur Foundation and with the CWC as its aim is to criminalise war. That you have created a movement dedicated to making the young understand why wars should not be fought, is commendable. I am glad that there is another such Foundation, quite similar to my
know the value of peace. I have lived with my pain; I know the value of love when you want to heal. I have lived with hatred, and now I know the power of forgiveness. Today, I am alive, I live without hatred, without the spirit of revenge, and I can tell all those who caused my suffering: I forgive you. That is the only way to save peace, to speak of tolerance and non-violence.
IM PHUC K M O R F e g a s s e M
The Kim Phuc Foundation was created in 1997. It helps children who are the victims of war and violence. In East Timor, Romania and, most recently, Afghanistan, we give them medical, physical and psychological assistance, fit them out with prosthetic devices if they’ve lost a limb, help them to get over the trauma they have gone through. I know how hard it is for those children to speak.
My heart is with all the victims of the wars going on right now. For them, I have never stopped spreading a message of peace. I thus reach out across the ocean to the Foundation in Malaysia and the CWC to join me in this noble battle to rid the world of war, to save our children and to live in a peace world.
Kim Phuc, who was famously photographed by Nick Ut as a naked 9-yearold running from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War, holding her son, showing her horribly scarred back and arm. She was the girl on the Photograph that brought the world’s attention to the horrors of the war in Vietnam.
My own people wanted to use me as a symbol, not of hope, but to sow the seeds of anger at the enemy. But I was freed of that, when something came into my life. It changed my life and my attitude. Today, I want to encourage people to love and help one another. We need to learn how to become more tolerant, how to look at the individual, to listen, to come out of ourselves, to help others instead of letting ourselves get carried away by anger and hatred, which give rise to revenge and violence in the
own Foundation that is working with war victims in many parts of the world. Many times I have been asked how I could forgive what had happened to me. It took me time, a long time, but I knew it was the right thing to do. That’s why I show the little girl in the picture. Because she tells my story and the consequences that war has had on my life. No parent wants what happened in that picture to happen again. I will never wish what happened to me, to happen to anyone else. I experienced war; I
It is also my hope that someday soon I shall be able to visit Malaysia and to see for myself the work undertaken by the Foundation and the CWC and how the Clubs are run in schools there. My very best wishes to all.
JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR
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