Peacemakers to tell about their time in dangerous places
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By ERIN ANDERSEN/Lincoln Journal Star
They came in peace to the war-torn streets of Palestine and the violence-ridden mountains of Colombia.
The two twentysomething Lincoln women came not to choose sides or support one over the other, but with a far simpler message: “We are all human.”
And so they walked amid machine guns, tanks and machetes, standing side-by-side with people who lived every day in fear of violence, persecution and death.
They danced. They sang. They listened. And they stood firm on a single belief : Non-violence is the way to peace and understanding.
This past summer, Amanda Balzer, 29, and Hannah Breckbill, 21, each spent two weeks in some of the world’s most dangerous and politically unstable places — Balzer in Colombia and Breckbill in Palestine — as members of Christian Peacemaker Teams.
Now back on U.S. soil, the two college students are sharing their stories in hopes than an enlightened American public can see the influence this country’s policies, politics and money have on lands far from home, and demand peaceful resolutions to conflict.
The two students — Breckbill, a senior mathematics major at Carelton College, in Northfield, Minn., and Balzer, a political science grad student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, — will present four programs here highlighting their experiences.
Breckbill’s great uncle was one of the 1984 founders of Christian Peacemaker Teams.
CPT is an initiative of the historic peace churches — Mennonites, Church of the Brethren and Quakers — with support from a range of Catholic and Protestant denominations. The idea started from a question: What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war?
So began a call to follow Jesus’ example of non-violence.
Trained teams have traveled to areas of conflict and militarized zones — including Iraq, Colombia, Palestine, Gaza, Haiti, Bosnia, and various points in the United States where Native and immigration issues are strong.
Often their mere presence as Americans is enough to convince warring factions to cease and desist — if only momentarily — so as not to harm or threaten the U.S. peacemakers, which they fear could bring about retaliation from the United States.
“It’s incredible to me that I have the power to do that just because of where I was born and where I am from,” Balzer said.
But it certainly is not a power you can count on in every conflict or situation. Peacemakers have died in the line of duty, she said.
In the Middle East, where anti-American sentiment is strong, Breckbill experienced a somewhat different reaction from people.
“People don’t respect the U.S. and its policies toward Israel,” she said in a telephone interview from Minnesota. “But people definitely appreciated our presence as people that would take their stories back to the U.S.”
Breckbill’s trip was divided into two portions — one week in East Jerusalem, where the group took day trips to the West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Bethany, and the second week in Hebron.
“It is a horrible fact that three-quarters of all Palestinians are refugees,” Breckbill said. “We went to the refugee camps. There was horrible overcrowding. … Palestinians are not able to move very far as there are so many checkpoints. … There was a lot of racial profiling.
“Because we were internationals, they tried not to treat us badly,” Breckbill said of her week in the West Bank. But because the CPT members traveled with the Palestinians, they could not help but notice the scrutiny and disrespect people endured.
In Hebron, the atmosphere was much more hostile.
“We experienced stone throwing. They called us Nazis and anti-Semites. They told us to go home,” she recalled.
“There was a desire on my part to communicate to them why I was there, and they didn’t want to listen to that. If I got close to them, I would be slapped across the face. We wanted to respond to the violence with a creative kind of love, but it is really difficult to understand how to do that, basically.”
Balzer’s Colombia trip began in Bogota, a city of eight million people. There CPTers met with human rights activists, attorneys and union leaders. They heard first-hand how three Colombian factions — the government, para-military and guerrilla groups — all are fighting to protect their financial interest and investments, to the detriment of the citizens.
“The people are caught in the crossfire of the violence that is happening,” Balzer said. “Colombia has had more union leaders assassinated than any other country in the world.”
Many Americans are unaware of how U.S. corporate interests are the crux of the conflict and violence, Balzer said.
“Unfortunately, many of those investments are not always to the benefit of the Colombian people,” she said.
“Second to Sudan, Colombia has more displaced persons — 3.5 million displaced persons — that is 10 percent of the population.”
And everywhere she went, she heard the same story from the Colombian people.
“They advised us not to underestimate the power of an informed U.S. citizenry,” Balzer said. “We have as much power as they do over their lives.”
Breckbill and Balzer are not naive. They know two weeks in a foreign country will not bring about world peace or even change political policies.
But both know they have made a difference — in their own lives as well as the lives of others.
“I did nothing to earn my American-ness. I just happened to be born here,” Balzer said.
And because of that, she said, she is automatically entitled to an education, civil rights and freedom of religion.
“I have these by accident. I feel a huge responsibility to use my accidental privileges to help people who have an accidental misfortune,” she said.
The goal of Christian Peacemaker Teams is not a cease-fire, but a transformation in human ideology.
“I believe that people can live in peace,” Breckbill said. “I do not believe people can live in peace and continue to hold the ideology that one race — or one religion — is superior or inferior to others.”
It’s about humanity, Balzer said.
“I think it is so important to see the humanity in other people, even if they are your enemy or on the other side.
“I think peacemaking is effective and has real promise. … It is what Christ calls us to do,” she said.
“Even if the world never changes, even if persecution and oppression go on, we still have to work for peace.”
Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com.
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