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SPREADING

CWC’S

WINGS

ABROAD

22

CRIMINALISE WAR JUNE 2015

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irst of all I would like to express my grateful thanks, my humble gratitude, to the Almighty Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala for giving us this opportunity again to gather again in an environment of peace and harmony in this hall, and we hope that He will bless us with His guidance and wisdom to pursue our objectives that is to make the young generation realise that war is a crime, war kills, and that they will be the ones who will suffer if we do not try to stop war in this world.

And again I would like to express my grateful thanks to YAB Tan Sri Muhyiddin for his presence here today.

We know that he had had a very busy schedule for the past one month but he has given us his time to present this keynote address. Thank you Sir. And also to express my gratitude to all the distinguished speakers who came from abroad and also from here in Malaysia for giving us the time and the expertise which we know will help the younger generation to think about why we have this forum targeting them.

We want our loved ones, the young generation, to understand and to realise that they will be the ones who will suffer most because war does not discriminate.

Ladies and gentlemen, this forum, the theme is “Engaging the Young Generation to Criminalise War and to Energise Peace”. As we have seen the whole of yesterday, our young generation has taken part and they are very confused and they want to know more about why we want war to be criminalised. And they are young. And we know that they will take up our mission because they are our flag-bearers of the future, and they will understand why – why we want them to follow our great efforts.

As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, and young people, since the beginning of this millennium, we have seen conflicts, sanctions, leading to war. And this time we have put in sanctions because, as we have heard yesterday, how cruel sanctions can be – it’s just like war, it causes slow death to mass population. The population, the victims, are starved.

They cannot get anything economically, and so this is a precursor to war. And we don’t want our children to be starved. We don’t want them to lose the roof above their heads. We don’t want them to lose the love and care of their parents. So, ladies and gentlemen, that’s one of the reasons why we have to start changing the minds of people about war.

War is a crime, war kills, and the impact of war on people, including children, is really really horrendous. So this is one of the reasons why we started to establish clubs for secondary schools which is called “Criminalise War

Clubs”. And we have to thank the Minister of Education who has kindly allowed and approved the establishment of these clubs throughout the country. So far we have 3 premier schools – pioneer – having this “Criminalise War Clubs” in their schools and they will be performing, they will express their hearts and minds today on this stage later on. But other schools have already picked up our mission – our concept of having younger people to understand why war should be criminalised, and we are spreading throughout the country. And hopefully, in the future, we would have clubs overseas, particularly in those countries that have gone through hardship, conflicts, sanctions, and also war.

Here, in Malaysia, we have relative peace. We are multiracial. We have diversity in culture, religion, and so forth. But we understand – we have a conscience – to be together and that we understand that if we fight with each other, we will not be gaining anything. We will lose; both the victorious and the victims will lose.

So, in Malaysia, although we have peace, we want other people, our neighbours, other countries, to have peace just like us. We need political stability. We need understand among all tribes and races in the country so that they will achieve peace.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have invited distinguished speakers from overseas and they will be enlarging, explaining, and sharing with us their experiences in Hiroshma, Nagasaki, and other places which I still have memories of their disasters. We have, of course, many disasters happening in this world – natural disasters. But the man-made ones are the ones who really really worry us.

We want our children to have roofs over their heads, food on their tables, and clothes to wear, and parents to love and care for them. This is what – the motive of our Criminalise War Clubs. We want them to understand that we care for them, and we want them to care for their children, and their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren also.

So, with that, I would very much like to thank all the distinguished speakers – especially YAB the Minister of Education – for being here and to give their expertise so that our young generation who yesterday had a really full day asking questions which not only for their information but those questions which really confuse them.

That we are here to inform them properly, deeply, and we want them to realise that we adults care for them because we want them to have roofs above their heads, food on the table, and parents and loved ones to care for them for always.

JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

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