The community of this country celebrates a mass in the Murcian neighborhood of Vistabella and returns to protest in Murcia and Cartagena against the Russian invasion for the fourth consecutive day
Silence in the parish and proclamations in the street. The rejection of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia once again dotted the streets of the Region of Murcia with images with concentrations of support for the victims and against the armed conflict.
The first act begins at noon in the Plaza de la Cruz Roja de Murcia, the place chosen by the Ukrainian community to show their rejection of the war every day at five in the afternoon. Some 150 people gather there under the slogan “Not to war again” in an act supported by the United Left-Greens Region of Murcia, Podemos and social groups such as the Coordinator of NGOs in the Region, the Yayoflautas and the Platform for Underground .
Demonstration against the war in the Plaza de la Cruz Roja in Murcia. /
Those attending observe a minute of silence for the victims and read a manifesto condemning armed conflicts. “Once again the working class, the population of Ukraine is suffering the disastrous consequences of imperialism that, together with Russia, the United States and NATO, have increased military tension instead of opting for the path of diplomacy and peace,” points out the priest and social activist Joaquín Sánchez. Spokespersons for the other groups in attendance continue to condemn “roundly Putin’s attacks against freedom” and show solidarity “in the same way” with the Syrian people, “who have suffered a new bomber by the Israeli military forces in the face of the resounding silence of the international community”. In addition, they demand the “urgent convening of an international conference of the United Nations to seek a peace solution to the war and put an end to the Russian invasion.”
The saddest mass of Ukrainians
Less than a kilometer from there, in the Murcian neighborhood of Vistabella, almost coinciding with the end of the reading of the manifesto, hundreds of Ukrainians begin to enter the Nuestra Señora de Fátima parish, where every Sunday a mass is celebrated in their language, but that this week acquires a special meaning between prayers for the destiny of his country and his family and friends.
With two Ukrainian flags on the altar and the church almost at capacity, an Orthodox liturgy begins with a sad and solemn atmosphere that only children are capable of breaking. A little boy plays with his fingers sitting on one of the side benches. Another, wearing sneakers that emit flashes of purple light, runs from one side of the church to the other, stopping from time to time next to her mother and giving her a smile that she returns with an effort. Next door, a two-year-old girl sleeps peacefully. The adults, meanwhile, shed tears or fight against the knot that the military invasion of their country put in the pit of their stomachs in the early hours of February 24.
In the afternoon, the Ukrainian flags and hundreds of people return to the Plaza de la Cruz Roja in Murcia and the Icue in Cartagena. It is the fourth consecutive day of protests against the war that keep the Ukrainian community on edge.