Opening ceremony

in Kastelli, Crete, April 20, 2006

Along the peace path to entrance of hall for opening ceremony

Podium of opening ceremony

The speakers

Wisdom resides in what is acclaimed in public

for all

whom came to hear

transpire that some clear words are spoken

pertaining to peace in a world

gone too often wild over simple words

lost not in a crowd but in fires lit on hill sides

till destruction descends like winter does every time

the autumn season ends not with a refrain of harvests

but with endless, equally fruitless disputes about

much ado about nothing!

Opening speech by the mayor of Kastelli,

Emmanouil Georgiou Smyrnakis

http://frontoffice-kastelli.gennet.edu.uoc.gr/en/municipality/mayor/mayor-cv.html

Takuya Kaneda, Prof. and Coordinator of Kids' Guernica, Japan

Katerina Anghelaki- Rooke translating his speech into Greek

Kids' Guernica:http://www.kids-guernica.org/

Spyros Mercouris came and immediately loved the Kids' Guernica project. He knows what it means to bring children and youth together in the same spirit as what he shared with his sister always emphasizing 'now as then' to highlight a need to reflect upon the continuity in Greek history, in order to understand the present. This evasive time to be experienced when really lived requires in terms of practical coordination a sense of timing. This Spyros Mercouris has in a most astonishing way just as he remembers every face and name and date. He needs not to keep any diary and still he keeps his appointments. He has a name in Crete for many reasons but also then he is very much at home once amongst children.

Spyros Mercouris, brother of Melina, first coordinator of a ECoC

city when Athens received the title for the first time in 1985

A few words about Kids' Guernica

Picasso, the giant in painting, has been followed by many little giants.

All these murals show that children know best how to express themselves with all their imagination. They conceive a world at peace and not one to be bombed from the air.

Picasso set an important tone when he painted Guernica. As expression of human pain, it does not fit into the one or other political category. Human pain comes from within and cannot be expressed by simple political images or symbols.

Today there are too many Guernica's in the world and too many innocent civilians have been bombed. It seems that only children are able to enter seriously a peace process as they still trust the other and do not need an enemy picture to justify their actions. They are free to go with their imagination into the future."

Spyros Mercouris

Mayor of Kastelli making a gift to Spyros Mercouris

Nicholas Spetsidis

Socrates Kabouropoulos, EKEVI - National Book Centre

Opening speech by Sachi Kaneda

I am very happy to have a chance to come to Greece, especially, here Crete. In world history class, I learned about the Knossos palace in Crete and its peace-loving people.

Most of Japanese high school students don’t think about “peace” so seriously, because we think peace is a quite natural thing like water or air.

I was born of a Japanese father and a Nepalese mother. Since I was a little girl, I visited my mother’s country, Nepal many times. Nepal is known as the birth place of

Lord Buddha. My mother always told me Nepal was a very peaceful country but today it became a country of conflict. The government and an anti-government group have been fighting each other for many years. I heard there are many young soldiers, the same teenagers as we are.

A few years ago, when I went to Nepal to attend my cousin’s marriage ceremony, I faced a very terrible thing. On the way from my auntie’s house to Kathmandu, our car was suddenly stopped by the army soldiers because an anti-government group attacked a village near the mountain road. I could hear many gun shots between the army and the anti-government group. We had to stop in the darkness for nearly five hours.

I felt the hours very long like a day. Luckily, we could reach Kathmandu and return to Japan. I never forget this terrible experience. Even though I go to Nepal, I can escape from Nepal to Japan anytime but most of Nepalese people can not leave their mother land.

Why peaceful Nepal has changed? There must be some reasons to fight such as poverty and social injustice. However, violence will never give a solution but worsen the situation. Such social disorder makes poor people much poorer as seen in the recent Nepal.

To create peaceful society, I believe imagination is very important. The imagination means to imagine others’ suffering and happiness. Please imagine yourself to be a girl just like me, who has to face bombing every day, a girl who is forced to have a rifle, and imagine what she really wants to do, and how she could be happy.

With my father, I have participated in some KIDS’ GUERNICA exhibitions in Nepal, India, Italy as well as Japan. No doubt painting on a huge canvas is great fun.

And that this project can give us wonderful opportunities to meet people from different places of the world. To know different opinions of people from different cultures is the first step toward the world peace. So I would like to have many friends during this peace event to know their cultures.

Thank you.

Sachi

Nicholas Spetsides, Hatto Fischer, Takuya Kaneda, Spyros Mercouris

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