The Chilean humanist militancy makes a common cause with the clamour of European civil society and its call for a nonviolent demonstration against war on 2 April 2023.

We have been denouncing the political leadership of the first world powers as responsible for the brutal violence of war and the transgression of the human rights of citizens in different parts of the world. The numbers of victims of mass killings of civilians, torture, beatings and imprisonment in lawless compounds are scandalous, without all this implying that they assume any responsibility.

We have clearly stated that the governments of the European Union have been imposing a model of society for decades. Today they are warning about the growth of far-right parties, as in Italy, Sweden, Spain, Poland and Orbán’s Hungary, and they say that the phenomenon has its origin in the increase in immigration. What they do not assume is that such migration comes from countries that have been destroyed by NATO.

We denounce the military industrial complex, those who mercilessly and humanely enrich themselves at the cost of the blood and lives of innocent people in different parts of the world.

In a direction contrary to the forms of the prevailing anti-humanist system, in Chile the Humanist Movement with all its organisms, including its political organ, the Humanist Party, has intended from its origins to “Humanise the Earth”, an objective that implies resolving the great human problems, both of the individual and of society. Universalist Humanism maintains that, in all cultures, at its creative best, the humanist attitude permeates the social environment.

This attitude is not a philosophy but a perspective, a sensibility and a way of living in relation to other human beings. Our social doctrine and our commitment to action in the world has as its basic principles to place the human being as a central value and preoccupation, to affirm the equality of all people, to recognise personal and cultural diversity, condemning any discrimination based on economic, sexual, racial, ethnic and cultural differences, to promote the human being as a central value and preoccupation, to affirm the equality of all people, promote the development of knowledge beyond the limitations imposed on thought by prejudices accepted as absolute or immutable truths, affirm freedom of ideas and beliefs, and repudiate all forms of physical, economic, racial, sexual, religious, moral and psychological violence.

Humanists around the world are called upon to make visible any violation of human dignity and to denounce anything that goes against these principles. In this particularly sensitive year, given the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of our compatriots during the Chilean civil-military dictatorship, we place ourselves on alert against these aberrant anti-humanist processes and we call on all people of good heart to demonstrate by raising their hands for Peace and Nonviolence on Sunday 2 April at 12 a.m. in front of the Museo de Bellas Artes in Santiago de Chile; because violence can be learned and so can non-violence.

Collaborative writing by the militancy of the Humanist Party