Pinoys get award for non-violence

Another first for Filipinos.

Two international organizations will confer today to the entire Filipino citizenry the first "Global Non-Violence Award" in recognition of two popular uprisings that toppled a dictatorship in 1986 and dismantled a widely perceived corrupt administration this year.

Lou Ann Guanson, vice president of the Center for Global Non-Violence, said her group and the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Foundation headed by Pierre Marchand of France have agreed to extend the recognition to the entire Filipino people for effectively promoting world peace.

"We agreed to grant the award in recognition of the non-violent struggle of the (Filipino) people as exemplified in EDSA people power which was done twice in this country," Guanson said.

Guanson, who claimed to have a mixed blood of Hawaiian, Japanese, Spanish, Swedish and Filipino, is also vice chairman of the Martin Luther King Foundation.

She said the 70 million Filipinos will be the first recipient of the Global Non-Violence Award.

The awarding would be one of the highlights of today’s 15th anniversary celebration of people power I that ousted the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, and catapulted Corazon Aquino, widow of the martyred Sen. Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr., to the presidency.

To receive the award on behalf of the people is either President Arroyo or Vice President Teofisto Guingona Jr.

Guanson also revealed that he has proposed to the awards committee of his group to install a bronze replica of the award at the historic EDSA Shrine in Mandaluyong City "where the people could visit this historic structure once in a while."

Addressing a meeting of officials and members of the People’s Power Commission at the Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan, Marchand said "the world salutes the Filipinos" for their courage in overthrowing two undesirable presidents who were both accused of illegally enriching themselves in office.

Marchand also called on the Filipino people to join his group in promoting the United Nations’ declaration for a decade of peace and non-violence for the children of the world.

"The world is sick and tired of war and violence," Marchand stressed.

"You have given the gift in a world that only knows force and violence...of effecting radical change without firing a shot, without creating new enemies, nay by making friends of old enemies, showing them the respect that triggered a national shift, a paradigm change that could not be denied. You were able to prove that a human being is above all systems and laws," Marchand added.

He said the legacy of EDSA I and II would be the Filipino people’s gift to other peoples of the world. "The spirit of EDSA can reach every nook and cranny of this violent world."

Marchand also said the 15th anniversary of people power I was significant as it came 18 years after the death of Ninoy Aquino, 30 years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., 50 years after the death of Mahatma Gandhi, 2000 years after the death of Christ.

"After listening to one prophet after another, there is (still) no peace," he stressed.

"The world has invented one structure after another, one treaty after another, one convention after another, and there is (still) no peace," Marchand added.