The South African Nobel peace laureate passed away on 27th Dec 2021 at the age of 90.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu. An image on 13th Nov 2021
Tutu once made his popular statement in 2013 which made him stand out as a true icon of all the times.
What’s being done to the Palestinians at checkpoints, for us, it’s the kind of thing we experienced in South Africa.
Once Nelson Mandela said that Tutu was known not just for his role in ending a dark chapter of racial discrimination in his country but also for speaking out against injustices around the world, including in the Middle East.
Tutu’s human appreciation made many believe in him to be God sent when it come to matters of fairness and justice. He once said,
I wish I could keep quiet about the plight of the Palestinians. I can’t!
Cyril Ramaphosa -the South Africa’s president honoured this fight in a tribute to Tutu announcing the archbishop’s death. In the presidential statement released as of yesterday, he said.
The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa.
In other words, he hailed Tutu as someone who surpasses very many people of this generation.
A man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid, he was also tender and vulnerable in his compassion for those who had suffered oppression, injustice and violence under apartheid, and oppressed and downtrodden people around the world.
Archbishop Tutu was an outspoken critic of Israeli occupation in Palestine and the siege on Gaza. He said to the washington post in 2013 that
I wish I could keep quiet about the plight of the Palestinians. I can’t! The God who was there and showed that we should become free is the God described in the Scriptures as the same yesterday, today and forever.
He drew parallels between Israeli occupation and apartheid in South Africa.
What’s being done to the Palestinians at checkpoints, for us, it’s the kind of thing we experienced in South Africa.
Tutu was to lead a UN fact-finding mission with Professor Christine Chinkin to investigate a November 2006 Israeli attack on Gaza’s Beit Hanoun district that led to the deaths of 19 Palestinians, including seven children.
Israel refused to grant Archbishop Tutu and Professor Chinkin authorisation to enter Gaza, but they were eventually able to travel to the besieged territory via Egypt. They met with survivors and eye-witnesses and produced a report to the Human Rights Council.
In a May 2008 statement about his mission, the archbishop decried the Israeli siege on Gaza, in place since 2007, as “a massive violation of human rights”. Tutu also said the Israeli siege contradicted the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Desmond Tutu speaks with a child from the Al-asamneh family in Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza. An image in 2013.
He also released a statement explaining how the spiritual intervention were at work with manly ways.
Those scriptures speak about a God: a God of the Exodus, a God notoriously biased in favour of the weak, of the oppressed, of the suffering, of the orphan, of the widow, of the alien. We are in a state of shock, exacerbated by what we subsequently heard from the victims and survivors of the Beit Hanoun massacre. For us, the entire situation is abominable.
We believe that ordinary Israeli citizens would not support this blockade, this siege if they knew what it meant for ordinary people like themselves. No, they would not support a policy which limits fuel supplies or automatically cuts off the electricity supply. They would not support a policy which jeopardizes the lives of ordinary men and women in hospital, that cuts off water and food from hospitals jeopardizing the lives of babies.
Tutu joined a delegation of the international NGO in August 2009 he visited Israel and occupied Palestinian territories to advocate for peace.
