Cláudio Bueno da Silva

Persecuted for love of justice

 
The life story of great men persecuted for fighting for the sake of good is impregnated with human injustice. In all times and places History, not always official, records the attack of stationary and hybrid forces against those who propose new paths for Humanity, on the basis of love and education, freedom and progress, peace and fraternity. The methods used by these forces translate the evolutionary stage in which they find themselves: treachery, betrayal, lies, deception, everything, at the service of selfish and transitory interests.

There is no need to comment on the most heinous persecution registered on Earth: it is recorded in the Gospels. Many other well-known examples of persecution serve as a lesson to all of us, in order to strengthen our convictions about egalitarian justice, fraternal love, peace among men, and confidence in the future. These episodes show that the performance of the shadows - whether of men or Spirits - is always acting in the context of human actions. There are men of dubious character associated with inhuman phalanxes with which they identify themselves, who cause great damage to life, sometimes in the physical plane, sometimes in the spiritual plane.

I will mention only a few cases that show how good and evil fight each other in this land of trials and atonement in which we live. The work and ideas of these "persecuted", each in its context, were all the more important the greater the opposition they suffered. Even though they were misunderstood by many, they did well to the societies and God certainly rewarded them for that.

The isolated facts of the life of these benefactors do not always portray the fundamental importance they had in society and in the time in which they lived.

Their lives are certainly filled with innumerable small humanitarian actions practiced daily that did not enter their biographies but which fed the great deeds that Humanity today reveres with respect. For this reason, they must have suffered daily persecutions, constant, apparent or subtle, a natural reaction, of those who do not accept to live with the emancipatory ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity.

Allan Kardec, "signatory" of the Christ

On June 12, 1856 Mr. Rivail (Allan Kardec-1804-1869), through the medium Miss. Aline C., asks the Spirit of Truth about the important mission that some Spirits attributed to him. "I have, as you know, the greatest desire to contribute to the disclosure of truth", says Rivail, "but from the role of a simple worker to that of a chief missionary, the distance is immense".

The Spirit of Truth not only reaffirms the assignment revealed to Rivail, but also warns him: "The reformers’ mission is full of obstacles and dangers. Yours is a rough one, I warn you, because you have to stir and form the whole world". He also warned him about the misunderstandings and persecutions that the future Encoder of Spiritism would fall victim to.

Almost eleven years after that meaningful dialogue with the Spirit of Truth, Allan Kardec writes a bitter note on January 1, 1867, confirming that the predictions given by that Spirit – who had previously announced the great obstacles and difficulties of his mission - had fully come true.

The note says: "I have been the target of the hatred of intransigent enemies, slander, envy and jealousy; shameful libels were published against me; my best instructions were falsified; I was betrayed by those whom I trusted most and paid with ingratitude by those whom I served. The Paris Society was a constant focus of intrigue woven by those who claimed to be in my favor and who, embraced me, but stabbed me in the back. They said that my sectarians were paid with the money I got with Spiritism. I had no rest and often I gave in to the amount of work, and compromised my health and risked my life".

It is unbelievable that a good, educated, intelligent, highly educated man, a very successful educator in France, was treated with such disregard as soon as he saw the truth in what would become Spiritism and the good it would bring to Mankind. A man, whose mission was to attend to the call of the higher spheres of Life in the preparation of the Earth for the change of the evolutionary stage and consequent regeneration of Humanity; a man, who believed primarily in the education of the Spirit, as a form of ultimate transformation. A man, who fought for Charity and Love to his neighbor, a "signatory" of Christ's moral teaching. Such a man was persecuted! 

A victim of intolerance

Euripides Barsanulfo (1880-1918), even though he was a man of integrity at the service of true Charity, he also was a victim of the society where he lived, that insulted, persecuted, accused and wanted to arrest him.

Euripides was persecuted not because he was a medium, but because he was a Spiritist medium, he professed Spiritism. In a region of extreme poverty and totally devoid of doctors like the mining triangle of the early twentieth century, Barsanulfo was the caretaker of the ills of a whole population. He was referred to when evils were incurable, when child-birth was difficult, when the emergency called for an amputation, when an accident called for immediate action, when the so-called "mad" were brought undeceived but healed by their moral strength. The medium attended all, indiscriminately, always with great success. In his pharmacy, he wrote psychic prescriptions under the inspiration of Dr. Bezerra de Menezes, and exported the medicines without charging a penny.

Euripides, a man who lived by the Gospel, was doubly persecuted. Victim of the religious intolerance of the Catholic clergy and traditionalist segments of the city of Sacramento, State of Minas Gerais he was also reported and prosecuted for "practicing illegal medicine". Author of the complaint: a religious association that should treasure the examples of the Christ on Earth.

But the lawsuit against him did not go ahead. After a long pilgrimage, from hand to hand, from judges to judges, after countless allegations of impediment and suspicions on the part of the authorities to try the proceedings, the document was filed without a decision on the merits of the complaint.

The judges, in addition to respecting the accused, had themselves, or their relatives and friends, received some kind of benefit from the medium, which morally prevented them from incriminating Euripides. Euripides' sympathetic Love overcame intolerance and prejudice. 

Gandhi, the power of convictions

Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948), an Indian leader, became a worldwide celebrity for his tireless work for Peace among men. His patience and determination freed India from the English dominion of more than a century. His methods of fighting exploitation and injustice, that his people suffered, were none other than personal examples of peaceful action and the conscious and orderly attitudes of civil insubordination.

A graduated attorney, Gandhi found it difficult to practice his profession and went to South Africa, another English colony, where he worked for fifteen years defending causes of Indians and Muslims who lived there and who made him famous. Upon returning to India, the persecution of the English settlers began and they regarded him as a "dangerous nationalist."

His detached style of life, fully consistent with his ethical principles, and his growing popular charisma, hampered attempts by the English government to retaliate against his campaigns for justice and civil rights of the Indian people. Even so, Gandhi was arrested several times, sometimes for long periods, which he used politically by going on hunger strikes. This type of demonstration based on his convictions reinforced in the people the belief that the Mahatma (Great Soul) was really willing to fight for his country and constrained the authorities to moderate repression against the citizens.

With his fearless performance, Gandhi strongly influenced the conquest of the independence of his country using the principle of non-violence as a way of protesting. A defender of the dialogue between religions, he always fought against authoritarian abuses and for equal rights between people.

He was murdered by a radical Indian who disagreed with his position of tolerance in the Hindu-Muslim religious conflict that would originate the division of India with the creation of Pakistan, a Muslim majority state. 

"I have a dream"

In 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, in the United States, an American black woman refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger and was arrested.

The case greatly impacted the city's black community, and the Protestant pastor Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), along with local leaderships, organized a boycott of the Montgomery buses that lasted about a year. The protest only ended when, under heavy pressure, the US Supreme Court decided to consider race discrimination illegal on public transportation.

From this emblematic episode, Luther King founded the Conference of Southern Christian Leadership, an institution that would play a fundamental role in organizing movements around the defense of the civil rights of women, the poor and black Americans.

King, a graduate in Theology and Ph.D., set his pacifist activism on the same principles of nonviolence inspired by Gandhi, the Indian leader he had as a reference. With demonstrations in various cities and states he succeeded in getting the Civil Rights Act (1964) approved, which banned racial discrimination in schools and public places, and the Right to Vote (1965) for black Americans.

Martin worked not only in fighting racial segregation, but also fought for equal rights, improved education and living conditions for the underprivileged, especially in the southern region of the United States, where prejudice and the persecution of blacks were stronger. The concern for world peace made him associate with movements against the war in Vietnam.

His social action against abuse and injustice earned him numerous threats of hatred from those who felt superior by color. He was arrested and tortured several times. He had his house stoned. In 1964 he won the Nobel Peace Prize and, ironically, in 1968 was shot to death by an opponent.

He was famous for his speech in 1963 in Washington, where he gathered more than 200,000 people who were militants and sympathizers of the humanitarian causes that he defended. He said, "I have a dream, the dream of seeing my children judged by character, not by the color of their skin". Far more than legal changes, Luther King hoped that the future would bring the real, moral changes. 

Legal, but not moral

Apartheid (Separation or Separate Lives) was a regime of racial segregation established in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. Officially established by a white minority government, this law divided South Africans by color, determining separation on housing areas, health and education, revoking even the elementary rights of the immense black majority.

A society, self-called "Brotherhood", elaborated the doctrine of apartheid, which (be astonished!) stated: "The politics of racial segregation is based on Christian principles of what is fair and reasonable. Its purpose is to maintain and protect the country's European population as a pure white race, and to maintain and protect indigenous racial groups as separate communities in their own areas (...). Or we follow the course of equality and at the end it will mean the suicide of the white race, or we take the course of segregation". It is notorious that much of what is legal has no moral basis whatsoever. Is the similarity with what we see in the world today a mere historical coincidence?

This official regime approved more than 300 apartheid laws, and among many odd ones, there is one of them, the (Law of Reserve of Social Benefits) that  reserved public places for a particular race, creating segregated beaches, buses, park benches, hospitals, schools and universities.

Social discomfort, which was already widespread in South African tribes and communities, gained momentum when 69 blacks were killed and about 180 were wounded in the demonstration known as the Sharpeville tragedy in March 1960. Nelson Mandela, who already participated in student movements and led the African National Congress (CNA), founded the Young League of the CNA, the main political arm of the actions against racial segregation imposed by the white authorities.

From then onwards, Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) assumes an important leadership role in defending the rights of the South African people, and the resistance gains popular support and of the international community too, which opposes racist practices and cruel segregation.

As a consequence of the revival of the protests, the government has escalated the persecution of black leaders, and Nelson Mandela, who had been arrested in 1956 for "conspiracy", is accused and in 1964 sentenced to life imprisonment.

After decades of struggle between the official segregation that held power and the sectors that sought equality among South Africans, Frederik de Klerk, took control of the country in 1989 and publicly declares the failure of apartheid. That is when the first measures appear to reduce the pressure of the authoritarian and racist regime that unfortunately affected for such a long period that part of the African continent.

Nelson Mandela is released from prison and a few years later (1994) is elected the first black president of South Africa. He rewrote the country's Constitution and implemented reforms aimed at mitigating the harmful effects of apartheid in South African society. 

The tormentors pass, the benefactors of Humanity do not

People, groups and institutions, blinded by selfishness, foolish with pride, dominated by the vices of prejudice and intolerance, acted and still act as agents of backwardness and ignorance, in order to prevent the conquests of others that threaten their space and their presumed status. People, groups and institutions, through bad faith, premeditation and moral fraud, organize to impose ideas and systems that seduce, control and enslave. People, groups and institutions come together to perpetuate the hegemony of power and fortune, guaranteeing the maintenance of their particular interests, with the sacrifice of millions of beings.

Like Christ, who defended the causes of justice, love and truth, those who fight for the poor and oppressed, sick and hungry, simple and naive, against the inclemency of the dominators, are persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and even killed. The same happened with those that made the path of Humanity smoother preparing it for a better future, such as Socrates, Joan of Arc, Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei and others. Formerly they died on the cross, by fire... Nowadays, there is more astuteness, but the hatred is practically the same.

Until when will this happen? We do not know. However, it will not always be so. Let it last as long as it lasts, no matter what it costs, but Man will rise one day and stand up not only as an intelligent, but also as a human, sensitive and spiritualized Being, The fight is far from over, but the forces of good will definitely win. To doubt this is not to believe in God, and not to believe in God is unhappiness.

As we walk in this direction, let us be sure that the justice of God acts and those responsible for obstructing progress and the advancement of ideas, to the detriment of societies, will answer accordingly. Those responsible for the shedding of blood and tears will answer for their deeds in the severe and relentless Court of Conscience. 

"Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness." (Mt 5:10.)

The tormentors passed, pass, and will pass. The benefactors of Humanity do not.

Bibliographical sources:

educacao.uol.com.br/biografias

pensador.uol.com.br/biografia

planetasustentavel.abril.com.br

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Apartheid.

Allan Kardec, Posthumous Works, "My Mission", Lake, 17th edition, no date, trans. Bezerra de Menezes.

Freitas Nobre, Police persecution against Euripedes Barsanulfo, Edicel publisher.

Jorge Rizzini, Euripides Barsanulfo, the Apostle of Charity. Correio Fraterno publisher.