Dear Michelle,Despite of fully supporting the proposed wording, I think that an essential part is missing. Pat's initial note was more balanced on this.
I.e. we certainly and strongly condemn Russian state aggression, but this should not be translated to generalized hatred to anything Russian.
I kindly ask you to revisit Patricia's initial message where she makes this point much better than I do now. If you agree please consider a relevant amendment of the proposed CETAF's statement
All the best
Petros
On 2/3/2022 8:48 μ.μ., Michelle.Price@ville-ge.ch wrote:
Dear CETAF Colleagues,The CETAF Executive Committee had its scheduled meeting this afternoon and discussed the request by Patrick Mráz for CETAF to 'express its opinion and also to appeal to Russian curators to press Putin to stop this tragedy.' We also thank those who were active in responding to this original message and to Alessandro for starting the drafting process.
The current situation, unprecedented in our time, is a human tragedy on an unimaginable scale. It also represents a political and democratic crisis that threatens local, regional and even global stability. All at a huge cost in human lives as well as causing enormous human suffering, both now and for the weeks, months and years to come.
We, as a community, should support our colleagues in any way that we can, but given the unstable circumstances and the unknown consequences that may befall people who go against such a regime, we are not in a position to ask them to endanger themselves at the current time.
We may be more impactful if we issue a statement supporting a rapid and peaceful end to the conflict, in support of our fellow scientists and scientific institutions, and in sympathy for the immense suffering of the Ukrainian people.
As a first draft, we propose the following short statement:
We, the European Taxonomic Community, gathered around the European Consortium Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF), express our shock over the current situation in the Ukraine. Our community strongly condemns the invasion, which has had a devastating impact on the people and infrastructure of Ukraine. We express our sympathy for the suffering of the Ukranian people and deplore the ongoing loss of life.
We denounce the deliberate destruction of civil infrastructure, including of scientific and research objects. We offer our support to our scientific colleagues who have been touched by the conflict and our fellow scientific institutions.
We call for a rapid and peaceful end to the conflict.
We will continue to work on this and will come back to you with a finalized statement as soon as possible, as well as on a way for people / institutions to support the statement, as not all may want to do so at this time.
In the meantime, it would be useful if you could gather statements (links to them) from your national governements, national science foundations or other national bodies related to research / biodiversity that we may link to. To avoid overflow in peoples inboxes, please send them directly to me (michelle.price@ville-ge.ch) so I can collate them. Once collated this list of links to statements can be shared. It would also be good to know if your organistion or research organisation(s) that you have connections with in your country are involved in the Scholars at Risk (SAR) network (https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/).
With my best regards,
Michelle
Prof. Michelle Price
Head of Science
Head Curator-Cryptogamy
Tel. +41 22 418 5148
michelle.price@ville-ge.chConservatoire et Jardin botaniques de Genève (CJB)
chemin de l'Impératrice 1
1292 Chambésy-GE
Switzerland
www.ville-ge.ch/cjb/Notre environnement est fragile, merci de n'imprimer ce message qu'en cas de nécessité.
Vice-Chair of CETAF - www.CETAF.org
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