standup.comboniyouth.org.uk

"When Yahweh made a judge 
appear among his people, 
Yahweh was with him 
and saved them from their enemies...
for Yahweh was moved to pity 
by the lament of his people 
who were oppressed and persecuted".
Judges 2:18

Ten years ago, the African Continent hit the headlines with the opening of the African Synod and the tragedy of the genocide in Rwanda. These two events epitomized the reality of a world divided between oppressed and oppressors. Ideas become confused when we try to figure out who are the persecuted and who are the persecutors. At a meeting on water privatisation I met John, a human right activist from South Africa. "In the past, my people, he said, had to distinguish: for, the foreigners who brought the Gospel, were also the very ones keeping the apartheid system in act, by distorting parts of the bible to justify the unjustifiable. Today, to have access to our water foreign-based companies ask us to insert prepaid cards into the water counter for them to profit."

That same evening, Berenice, a forensic anthropologist from Colombia, told us how she had to exhume bodies of Indios who had been mutilated and beheaded. "What is the need for such barbarian atrocity?" she questioned. The following Saturday I was at a conference at Strathclyde University. A Palestinian woman, Fatima, told how her family was destroyed during the Israeli attack at Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, and she escaped the massacre by running for her life. She was then a ten-year old girl. Ever since this she lived in Lebanon in anguish and woe. In 2001 she was dispersed to Glasgow as an asylum seeker. "I want to go home: help me to get back to Jaffa, where my parents' house was..." Her appeal was due in March... 

Controversy is evident in the question of wearing the Muslim jihab or Christian crosses in Europe. The French government voted for an up-keeping of the principle of laicity of the State. In Italy, Abel Smith, a convert to Islam, sued the Pope because in his opinion the Pope was not respectful of Islam. Later on, a judge ruled in Smith's favour that crucifixes had to be removed from public schools. Of course that never happened, because the cross is for Italians a symbol of their culture and civilization. The remark was made by the highest authority in the country and prompted the Ministry of Education to allocate funds so that crucifixes be hanging from the walls of every classroom. It is still not clear if a mention of the Christian roots of Europe would be written down in the forthcoming European Constitution. However, on the 10th of June there will be the European elections. A chance for us electors to have our say on the above and on the choice to go to war made by some governments. Please, read the communicate from AEFJN on the European Election, which I have inserted in the web-page.

On the webpage there are new links to visit about JPIC plus the latest from Fr. Zolli in Rome, concerning the campaign for the control of the commerce of small arms and some E-mail from the National Secretariat in Glasgow. We do know that small arms are in the hands of the child soldiers, like the 25.000 abducted by Koni's Lord's Resistance Army in North Uganda. This is a war that has caused over a million Acholi refugees to flee to the towns and 120,000 deaths. The compounds of the Catholic Parishes of Gulu and Lira become open dormitories for the people seeking haven for the night. They are called night's commuters, they are mainly women and children. Saturday, 20 March was the first anniversary of the war in Iraq. We marched again with the slogan "They lied many died". In Glasgow centre Fr. Tesfamichael and myself were among some one thousand people. Many people of good will are on the move in the civil society.