3123 - Recognizing morals

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Evi Charitidou

Why aren’t you crying on hearing the word genocide? Aren’t you sorry for the innocents? Do you prefer oblivion? Can’t you hear them waiting in the earth silence? Did you forget them behind the bars? Can’t you see the ripped bellies? Can’t you hear women screaming when raped by the barbarians? Can’t you see the piles of men’s head? What exactly is that you want to forget, their pain or your guilt? Just because you were not then there, don’t you have to be here now? Back then would you have written down genocide for the next humans not to forget? Is it that you know that you wouldn’t have done anything back then either? Is it that you wonder whether you would have collaborated with the barbarians to save your sake? You wouldn’t burn women as they have done; you would simply close your eyes not to watch, wouldn’t you? Aren’t you closing your eyes now as well not to cry? Isn’t one genocide enough for you to make you cry? What else do you want? Simply, not to have a house, not to have a job? Is this the only thing torturing you? So, you haven’t ever learned what pain means? Do you want to believe that your own have no interference with the genocide? Do you want us to be neutral and our history not to affect us? Is it that you don’t want to have a history reminding you of not having done anything for our genocide? Do you simply want to live with no conscience? To escape your guilt? However, either you want it or not, the genocide exists; as the innocents and Justs do exist. Even barbarians do exist. You don’t want to take a posture; for, you don’t know the issue. However, the issue knows your posture. Our genocide won’t be recognized by your neutrality. Your stance won’t make anything change. You don’t want to see by whom history is written, but it is being written. Your next decisions won’t be yours, but they will exist without you. Every day you will see more and more states recognizing our genocide and you will not have done anything about it. Just because you were born with us, you consider that you have the right of expressing an opinion, while the only thing you have is a duty. It is on the name of memory where humanness is written, nowhere else. You are so lucky to belong to the next ones; yet, your thinking left you behind with the previous ones. You haven’t changed, because you haven’t died, and now even when you die, still, you won’t change anything. You’ve decided to be neutral, because you were useless. However, now that our genocide is recognized, you know which your role has been in this process. You are annoyed not only by genocide, but also by recognition. The former will never know of your existence, but the latter will recognize you.