Remembrance Day about honouring the brave, not the bullies
By Cedric Chen
Photos by Mark Burnham
Many organisations and institutions hoist military-related flags for different reasons. But last year, when SFU hoisted the NATO flag at Cornerstone, I was so damn offended that I took a picture with my middle finger pointing to this flag of utmost shame.
For those who ask me “Do you have a grudge against NATO?” the answer is always, “Fuck yes.” This is not merely a personal grudge, but a wound of nationhood, on which salt has been poured by SFU’s decision to hoist the NATO flag. On May 8, 1999, during NATO’s military intervention in Yugoslavia, five JDAM bombs were launched from a NATO B-2 and hit the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia, killing three innocent Chinese journalists, injuring a few dozen other innocent people, and severely damaging the embassy itself. SFU’s decision to openly hoist the NATO flag on SFU’s main campus does nothing but pour new salt into an old wound of the Chinese community.
Aside from my nation’s grudge, while NATO has claimed that it exists merely for “collective defence” throughout its history, it has long been a vector through which the USA intervenes in other member-countries’ internal affairs, including an attempt to prevent France from successfully possessing atomic bombs and preventing the European Union from developing its own satellite navigation system — the Galileo System. Considering the U.S. has atomic bombs and their GPS system, which is available world wide for civilian purposes, was the only system the EU had access to until recently, the level of micromanagement NATO allows the U.S. is hypocritical. NATO has not been all that different from its cold war counterpart — the Warsaw Pact. The only difference is that while the U.S. armed forces are constantly in Europe, the USSR only sent troops into Europe when there was an anti-communist riot.
Hoisting flags for any sort of military organisation for Remembrance Day at SFU is very inappropriate. Remembrance Day is supposed to be a day to remember the soldiers who fought and died while protecting our country, not those who died to invade another country with questionable motives. Since the military intervention of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the majority of NATO’s military actions have sent member-countries’ armed forces into other nations and spilled blood on lands that don’t belong to them. This ideology is completely contradictory to what SFU proposes with “Engaging the world.” If we want to truly engage the world’s people, are we to do it with bullets and blood? Of course not. SFU promotes inclusion and multiculturalism, while NATO promotes violence as a means of resolving conflict. Hoisting this flag is an affront to the sentiments behind Remembrance Day and SFU’s motto.
For this year’s Remembrance Day, I sincerely wish that SFU would appreciate the value of peace and the true meaning of Remembrance and stop raising the flag of a militarist organisation like NATO. Engaging the world means making peace, not starting wars. On the other hand, if SFU insists on hoisting this blue flag of shamelessness, I will, without hesitation, point my middle finger towards it again and again until it’s removed.
