Pacifists are not enemies

Pacifists are not enemies, and all images of enemy are fictional

Dear friends, greetings from Kyiv. I will be very brief, time is limited and today in Kyiv there were two air raid alerts because of the Russian criminal war against Ukraine.

Our pacifist declaration entitled "Peace Agenda for Ukraine and the World" is, of course, a document totally opposite to any justification of Russian aggression, which is explicitly denounced in this document.

Problem is that hatred is a such sort of sickness that sick people think they are healthy and others, peace-loving people are sick.

Such distortion in perception of reality is a well-known part of conflict escalation mechanics, "funnel of conflict."

Professor Friedrich Glasl, whose models I used to analyze escalation of conflict between Russia and Ukraine in academic article on which the declaration is based, wonderfully explains mechanics of escalation in his monograph "Conflict Management" (by the way, I am thankful to him for a letter of support).

To explain it shortly and popularly, hatred and animosity is like partial insanity of generally quite sane people.

People infected by animosity tend to think that they are healthy and those who are not hating their enemies are sick.

Animosity distorts their perception of reality, they see enemies everywhere like some insane people see evil ghosts.

So-called expert of the Security Service of Ukraine wrote that the next phrase justifies Russian aggression: "A desire for peace is a natural need of every person, and its expression cannot justify a false association with a mythical enemy." It is general commonsensical observation, nobody will question it when we are talking about Putin's war machine making enemies, "foreign agents," from opponents of his criminal militarist regime, denigrating them in propaganda, repressing them. I never thought this general truth will be illustrated by my own example, but here it is, an innocent pacifist treated as enemy because of fictional and socially harmful character of any image of enemy.

My “Peace Agenda…” was sent to President Zelensky, but his office chose to ask Security Service of Ukraine to persecute me as an enemy instead of considering the “Peace Agenda…” on the merits and giving proper reply, as any democratic leader should treat petitions.

According to law, Security Service of Ukraine is directly subordinated to the President Zelensky and he also is a guarantor of human rights according to Constitution of Ukraine, so, he bears final responsibility for violation of my human rights (and I know for certain that I am not a sole victim).

The court's permission for search in my apartment is a collection of unfounded stereotypes of hatred hardly applicable to me.

During a year Security Service of Ukraine secretly surveilled me, tried to find any links with Russian agents, found nothing, but still convinced I am an enemy because of my advocacy of peace by peaceful means, of ceasefire and peace talks to stop senseless bloodshed and destruction.

Nonviolent resistance to aggressors and tyrants is always possible, even Armed Forces of Ukraine know that, they published at official website 198 methods of nonviolent resistance by Gene Sharp; all Ukrainians should know that after two nonviolent revolutions and nonviolent Ukrainian uprising in GULAG.

But when a pacifist speaks of nonviolent resistance, Security Service of Ukraine suspects he is an enemy and violates his human rights, like enemies are not humans. It is painfully dumb.

This illegal search of my apartment and seizure of computer and smartphone is very inconvenient, I need to prepare constitutional complaint for Vitaliy Alexeenko during the next two weeks because of deadline and all my work is on seized computer, there are other cases which need my contribution, so this seizure is a serious obstruction of my work as human rights defender.