By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Nov 27 2000 (IPS)

European lawmakers from across the ideological spectrum combined their voices in Portugal’s parliament to sing a song of peace, at the request of schoolteacher Marguerite Burankitse, of Burundi, winner of the North-South Prize.

Burankitse, a Tutsi who saved the lives of thousands of Hutu children, thus made another step towards achieving her dream, shared by many, of one day living in a world without conflict.

“She is living proof of how the attitude of one individual can mark the difference between life and death for thousands of human beings,” said Portugal’s President Jorge Sampaio.

When Sampaio and president of the unicameral parliament Antonio de Almeida Santos, presented her with the Council of Europe’s award, Burankitse, 44, chose not to give a speech, but instead invited the lawmakers to sing for peace in the world, and especially in Africa.

Maggie, as Burankitse is known, shared the award this year with Portugal’s former president and former prime minister Mario Soares, long-time leader of the country’s socialist movement who was imprisoned several times by the “Estado Novo” dictatorship (1926-1974) led by Antonio de Oliveira e Salazar.

The North-South Prize has been awarded annually since 1995 to “two public figures who have distinguished themselves through their deep commitment, their outstanding achievements and hope they have generated in the fields of human rights protection, the defence of pluralist democracy, and North-South solidarity and partnership.”

Burankitse told IPS that “what we are lacking is love, we are like robots,” as she explained her informal approach to receiving the award in the Portuguese parliament Friday. It was necessary “to invite all those present to join hands and sing for peace,” she said.

“What we need most in today’s world is to respect each other (because) ‘the other’ is always ‘a brother’,” she emphasised.

Burankitse, a Tutsi, was recognised with the prize for saving the lives of thousands of children, many of them sons and daughters of Hutu guerrillas, who represent the majority in Burundi and fight the Tutsis, who represent the power elite.

The history of Burundi’s civil war “has been terrible, because a handful of people do not want to abandon their privileges.”

The problem could begin to be resolved if many countries would not sell arms to the rival faction of this forgotten war, which has already claimed more than 300,000 lives, Burankitse pointed out.

“I often ask leaders why they need weapons, if it is to defend the people or to protect their own power,” stated the peace activist, who in 1993 lost her entire family, massacred by a band of Hutu farmers.

But despite past events, she insists that history obligates Hutus and Tutsis “to share the country, because human beings are sacred, they have only one God, whether Christian, Muslim or any other.”

Through her efforts since 1993, Burankitse won international economic support for the construction of 76 homes dedicated to reintegrating thousands of children back into society.

The North-South Prize is the second international award she has received. The French government honoured her in 1998 on the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But these awards do not serve as a lifesaver.

Twice a week, Burankitse risks her life travelling dangerous roads to visit various towns where even the most risk-taking of non-governmental aid organisations have suspended activity due to lack of security.

She does it “because we cannot continue on where we are. We are all children of the same fatherland, Tutsis and Hutus, seven million children of God.”

For Mario Soares, it is “a great honour” to receive the award because it is shared “with a voice of Africa, a natural voice of that continent we love so much.”

Soares was often in the dictatorship’s prisons alongside independence leaders from the Portuguese colonies of the time (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Santo Tome- Principe), from the former Portuguese-India (Goa, Diu and Damao) and East Timor.

Those ties endure a half-century later.

In 1970, exiled in France, “I went before the Council of Europe to offer my testimony against the Portuguese government about the massacres in Wiryamy,” in Mozambique, which had taken place two years earlier, Soares told IPS.

The North-South Centre of the Council of Europe, based in Lisbon, “was an idea of my friend, (the late former foreign minister of Germany), Willy Brandt,” he said, and its operations are “of vital importance so that Europe realises the reality of the world’s South, which is so often relegated and forgotten.”

Excerpt: