ELCA NEWS SERVICE
September 8, 2004
LWF Council Condemns Russian Massacre, Pleads For Sudan Peacekeepers
04-165-LWI*/JB
CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Council of the Lutheran World
Federation (LWF) said it was "horrified by the news of the
bloodshed" in Beslan, Russia, where more than 300 hostages were
massacred last week by an international group of armed insurgents
believed to be associated with rebels in the Russian province of
Chechnya.
The council's chair is the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, LWF
president and presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America (ELCA), an LWF member. It met Sept. 1-7 at Chavannes-
de-Bogis, Switzerland, near Geneva, where LWF is based.
In a public statement, the council described the incident as
an "atrocity [that] evokes a particularly strong sense of
revulsion, because the armed insurgents who planned it and
carried it out deliberately targeted children. No cause can
justify such inhumanity."
The council action also named other violent attacks in
recent days on civilians. It cited the suicide bombing of two
buses in Israel, in which 16 people were killed; a bombing in
Iraq in which 17 people died; recent Israeli missile attacks and
military incursions in Gaza resulting in civilian deaths; the
execution of 12 Nepalese workers by militants in Iraq; the deaths
of 10 people in a suicide bomb attack in a Moscow train station;
and the deaths of 89 people in apparent simultaneous bomb attacks
aboard two aircraft that left the same Moscow airport.
"The people most directly affected by these attacks were non-
combatants whose only 'crime' was to be associated in the minds
of their attackers with a perceived enemy or to be seen as
representative of 'the other,'" the statement said. Attacks on
civilians violate the fundamental religious and ethical principle
that human life and dignity is to be valued and respected, the
council said.
"The LWF condemns all such atrocities regardless of the
claimed justification," the statement said. "Political
objectives cannot be achieved through such inhumane means."
The council called on the global LWF communion to "pray for
an end to the violence in the world and in human hearts, for the
transformation of those whose hearts have been hardened by
violence, and the liberation of those trapped in its vicious
cycle."
In a separate action the council condemned attacks
by militia against communities in the Darfur region of Sudan and
expressed dismay at the refusal by the government of Sudan to
accept an adequate force of international peacekeepers in the
region.
To express solidarity with the victims of the violence and
with its ecumenical partners, the council also endorsed a call by
Catholic bishops of Sudan for help from the international
community to prevent the "terror, rape, torture, murder and
slavery" and "annihilation of an entire ethnic group in Darfur,"
the action said. The LWF governing body also urged the government
of Sudan to enable delivery of humanitarian assistance to the
people of the region, and for all parties to the conflict to
negotiate a just and peaceful settlement.
The council expressed deep concern about the unfolding
humanitarian crisis in the region and affirmed LWF support for
delivery of humanitarian assistance through Action by Churches
Together (ACT) International, the global network of churches and
related agencies responding to emergencies worldwide. The LWF is
a founding member of the Geneva-based ACT.
The council's Program Committee on International Affairs and
Human Rights recommended the action. Diadem Depayso, Lutheran
Church in the Philippines, chairs the program committee and
presented the recommendation to the council. She reminded
members of a 2002 council resolution that addressed protection of
civilians in times of war.
The LWF currently has 138 member churches in 77 countries
with nearly 65 million Lutherans worldwide.
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*Information for this report was provided by Lutheran World
Information, Geneva, Switzerland.
Information about the LWF Council and the Lutheran World
Federation is at http://www.lutheranworld.org on the Web.
For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or [log in to unmask]
http://www.elca.org/news
