'Answer to difference is to respect it'

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column

Michel Commane

When John Hume died last August tributes were paid to the great man from people all over the world.

This quote of his encapsulates so much of what the man was and what he stood for:

“Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity.”

Those words have been ringing in my ears these last few days.

Last week I had a most interesting chat with three young student radiotherapists, who are studying in Trinity College and are at present doing work practice in our hospital. 

It was a fascinating conversation. They are from Libya, Zimbabwe and Armenia.

They are in their early 20s, all speak fluent English. I think one of the young women was born in Ireland, one was born in Moscow and the other young woman was born in Zimbabwe.

They have been in the hospital for the last four or five weeks.

I mentioned to the Armenian student that I was somewhat aware of the current problems between her country and Azerbaijan. She was pleasantly surprised that I was familiar with the recently signed peace accord between the two countries and the role that Russia was playing in keeping the peace between the two conflicting sides. 

But she was not at all happy with  her government’s decision to pull their troops out of the disputed Ngorno-Karabach region. Like all conflicts, it is rooted in historical realities and this young lady is Armenian and takes the side of Armenia.  

The student from Libya was too young to remember Muammar Gaddafi but she often heard her parents talking about him. When I asked her what she thought of US policy in Libya she smiled and quickly explained how she was not happy with the American history of taking cheap, if not, free oil out of her country.

During our conversation the student from Zimbabwe said little. But what struck me most of all about the four of us, here we were talking and indeed laughing with one another, enjoying one another’s company and explaining to each other where we come from and what life is like for us in our current situations.

We all were emphatic in being proud about our own culture and where we came from.

It certainly was the high point of my day and I left the three students with a stronger resolve to listen to the views of people from other nations and cultures.

Somewhere out there in the ether we seem to be fed some sort of hatred about ‘the other’. It’s as if ‘my tribe’ is the best and the brightest. Isn’t that exactly what Donald Trump has been peddling for the last four years? The Ku Klux Klan do it too. Closer to home, far-right groups do it.

One of the great tenets of Christianity is that we are all made in the image and likeness of God. John Hume said it most succinctly when he said: ‘respect for diversity’.