Easter message: Dr Jim Swire - Only truth, not revenge, allows us to heal and forgive
In an illuminating Easter message set against the infinite darkness cast by the Lockerbie bombing, Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the atrocity, speaks of humanity’s dangerous lust for revenge - and the all-consuming power of truth
Now that the Persian Gulf is again sporting US warships, with Iran’s leaders no doubt plotting how to manage the repercussions of being bombed this time by US and Israeli warplanes, and also with US marine groups on their way, we need to heed the words of German philosopher Georg Hegel - “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”
The bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 has been shown for our group ‘’UK Families-Flight 103’ by our own careful researches over more than 38 years, to have been the work of Iran, through the use of Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP-GC terrorist group in Damascus acting as mercenaries and financed - just as Hesbollah in the Bekaa has always been - by the Iranian Ayatollas.
Our search for the truth as to who had murdered our families pressed forward over the decades, and came to fundamentally differ from the official account. It has had no driving force other than the need for us to know the truth about who really had murdered our family members, and to improve, if we could, the protection for other air travellers in the future.
Recent International political and military events, particularly some emanating from the USA, have confirmed what we had already discovered the hard way: truth had been suborned into US foreign policy and there crushed underfoot along with the interests of those bereaved families in the UK who merely sought that truth. Inability to reach that truth is echoed in the subheading of the Washington Post newspaper: ‘democracy dies in darkness’.
Just so long as those in power in Iran, (Ayatollahs or not), remain in power and able to slake their lust for revenge, so long will the world be a needlessly dangerous place. The Iranian people on the other hand have tried to make their dissatisfaction with their regime known with the greatest bravery, losing around10,000 citizens lives to the weapons of their own rulers recently.
It is a desperately sad aspect of humanity that the first visceral reaction that comes into so many of our human brains when we are attacked, or worse still those we love are killed, is to seek revenge. Yet it does not have to be so. We do not in our group ‘UK Families-Flight 103’ seek revenge against Iran for the Lockerbie atrocity.
We have sought the truth, and not simply in ’truth social’ either.
READ MORE: Inside the new documentary designed to ‘bring closure’ to Lockerbie victims and their families
Knowledge of what the truth really is about the origins of the dreadful attack on Pan Am 103, has only reinforced the realisation for us that revenge is self-defeating and generates hatred and the lust for revenge.
Yet there still is another way; from accepting the truth of where blame lies could spring the roots of healing. If on the other hand, for reasons of State, of International Politics or simply from our own human nature we were to enlarge or repeat the words and acts of revenge, where then would be the route to forgiveness or healing? One cannot forget, but can forgive. Even For that, we need to know the truth
Both Iran and the UK whether Muslim, Christian, agnostic, or atheist can read or listen to the teachings which Jesus Christ left behind, namely that judgement of others should be the realm of God, not us, and that our privilege is to love one another.
How healing it would be if the people of Iran who have suffered so much already could somehow come to forgive their Western assailants. How hard that would be today with bombs and missiles being showered on them.
But meanwhile here in an act of amnesty towards our little group of Lockerbie victims, (‘UK Families - Flight 103’) now that the bonds between our own country and the USA have loosened considerably, and the truth has been soften crushed perhaps the restrictions upon being allowed to know the contents of all the files that our own country keeps relevant to Lockerbie, but has kept out of public or media sight in Kew all these years, could be released for us to see.
It was after all our loved ones who were killed, and time must have loosened the need for security over the events of December 1988. We only seek to know the truth and after so many years surely the whole of the truth known by our Government at least about the atrocity over Lockerbie could be allowed out into the daylight?
--this is an abridged version of an original article by Dr Jim Swire, father of Flora Swire, who died in the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988
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