c. 2000 Religion News Service
On Eve of Anniversary, Falun Gong Continues Protests
(RNS) On the eve of the first anniversary of the 10,000-strong protest that prompted a government crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, Chinese authorities arrested at least three followers of the outlawed group Monday (April 24).
The Associated Press reported three were arrested, while Reuters placed the number at 12.
On April 25, 1999, about 10,000 Falun Gong followers surrounded government headquarters in Beijing, demanding official recognition in the largest protest held in Beijing since the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989.
Three months later, Chinese leaders banned the group, declaring the movement a public menace and a threat to Communist party rule. Since then, Chinese authorities have arrested thousands of Falun Gong practitioners and sentenced movement leaders to prison terms as long as 18 years.
“In the one year since that gathering, we have come to witness the Chinese government execute one of the largest, harshest and most arbitrary persecutions in modern history,” the group said in a statement issued by a New York spokeswoman.
As the anniversary date neared, police increased surveillance of Tiananmen square and of Falun Gong followers in Beijing. According to the AP, Chinese authorities detained at least 19 Falun Gong followers Sunday (April 23) in Tiananmen Square, including 11 women and a child. Another follower was arrested after attempting to unfurl a Falun Gong banner.
Christians Mark Easter
(RNS) As Christians around the world celebrated the Easter holiday, Pope John Paul II appealed for peace Sunday (April 23) in 61 languages and called for the end of racism and xenophobia.
“Lord Jesus … bring to a happy outcome the talks undertaken by people of goodwill who, despite so many doubts and difficulties, are trying to bring an end to the troubling conflicts in Africa, the armed clashes in some countries of Latin America, the persistent tensions affecting the Middle East, vast areas of Asia and some parts of Europe,” the pope said during a late-morning Mass that drew nearly 150,000 people to St. Peter’s Square. “Help the old nations to overcome old and new rivalries by rejecting attitudes of racism and xenophobia.”
In Pristina, Kosovo, about 300 people gathered for Easter services at the city’s only Catholic church, nearly vacant last Easter during NATO’s 78 days of air raids in the region. But violence marred the holiday in the northern half of the Serb province as Gorazdevac _ one of the few all-Serb villages remaining _ came under attack by people from a predominantly ethnic Albanian village nearby, according to the Serb Beta news agency. No injuries from the attack were reported.
At the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the day was celebrated with two services _ a Latin one celebrating Easter and an Orthodox Christian service commemorating Palm Sunday (this year, the Latin calendar is one week ahead of the Orthodox calendar).
In Bosnia, U.S. troops commemorated the observance with sunrise services in a large green Army tent, and at Canterbury Cathedral in England, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey warned worshippers to avoid the “values perils” of a “dot.com society.”
“We are so often seduced into believing that all that matters are things like power, success, fame and money,” said Carey. “No, these are transitory, paltry things compared to the ultimate things of the Spirit. They are not to be despised, but they should always take second place. Our country and her children must be rooted in these truths of the Easter faith, in the love of God and his personal and passionate commitment for each one of us. If not, we shall mistake the temporal world for the real world and suffer terribly as a result.”
Church Leaders Warn Against Zimbabwe Farm Occupations
(RNS) International leaders from the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches are warning that the sometimes violent occupation of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe is undermining the rule of law and could threaten the country’s future.
In an April 14 letter to Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, the Rev. Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation and also a Zimbabwean, said “illegal occupations of properties, violence and intimidation cannot, in my view, be condoned.” The letter was made public April 20.
The farm occupations began after the defeat in a referendum in February of a proposed new constitution that would have allowed Zimbabwe’s government to seize white-owned farms without paying compensation.
News reports from Zimbabwe place the death toll at at least six as thousands of self-styled veterans of the liberation war against the former Rhodesia in the 1970s have moved to occupy hundreds of the 4,500 white-owned farms.
Two more farms were invaded over the weekend (April 22-23), according to news reports from Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital.
Despite a ruling in mid-April that the squatters should be evicted from the farms, Mugabe has described the occupations a legitimate protest against the colonial-era ownership of one-third of the country’s productive farmland by the white farmers.
But Noko said the occupations had undermined the rule of law that the struggle for independence sought to establish and undermined “the legitimate argument in favor of addressing the fundamental issue of land redistribution,” Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency, reported.
The Rev. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, also said the occupations “give the impression of a massive breakdown of the rule of law.”
“Combined with the already tense economic situation, they appear to threaten widespread chaos,” Raiser said in a letter to the Rev. Densen Mafinyani, general secretary of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches.
Christian Legal Group Wins Right to Protest About Elian
(RNS) A Christian legal advocacy group Friday (April 21) won a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction barring the Secret Service from interfering in its sidewalk prayer vigils in Washington, D.C., for Elian Gonzalez.
The American Center for Law and Justice had filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Christian Defense Coalition in U.S. district court alleging the U.S. government violated the First and Fifth Amendment rights of CDC members by denying them permission to conduct a prayer vigil about the 6-year-old Cuban boy on a public sidewalk near the Cuban interests section in the Swiss embassy. The group supports allowing Elian to remain with his Miami relatives.
The ruling came before Saturday’s raid by U.S. law enforcement officials that took the young Cuban from his Miami relatives and reunited him with his father.
James Henderson, senior counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice in Washington, said the injunction permits CDC members to hold prayer vigils through May 1. When the 10-day restraining order expires, said Henderson, the group plans to ask for an extension.
“This is a case about interfering with the First Amendment rights of people of faith whose religious beliefs compel them to pray for the safety and liberty of Elian Gonzalez,” said Henderson. “The decision to prohibit a peaceful prayer vigil on a public sidewalk violates the constitutional rights of our clients.”
The Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the CDC, said the Secret Service targeted the coalition because the group does not support the Clinton administration’s viewpoint that Elian should be returned to Cuba.
A spokeswoman for the Secret Service said the agency could not comment on a case in progress, the Associated Press reported. Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers and the director of the U.S. Secret Service are named as defendants in the case.
Update: Flying Vicar Grounded by Fog
(RNS) Silverstone’s flying vicar was grounded by fog on Easter morning, the day of the British Grand Prix at the Northamptonshire motor racing track.
Because roads were jammed by fans arriving to watch the race at the Silverstone track, the race organizers had provided a helicopter to enable the Rev. Bridget Smith to move from one church to another in her three-church parish to conduct Easter services.
But the fog, which prevented the helicopter from flying, meant Smith had to be driven on the back of a motorbike, also provided by race organizers, to skirt the crowded roads around her three churches.
The race organizers had planned on using the motorbike only to drive the vicar from helicopter landing pads to her churches.
Quote of the Day: Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey
(RNS) “If it is not Mozambique and the floods, then it is Sudan and the forgotten war. If it is not Rwanda and the genocide, then it is Sierra Leone and the forced amputations of limbs from men, women and children. All too easily, in the face of such overwhelming suffering, we can shrug our shoulders and turn away from the pain.”
Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey in his Easter sermon at Canterbury Cathedral on Sunday (April 23) as quoted by the Associated Press.
DEA END RNS
