Sunday, July 03, 2005

Zimbabwe Methodist Bishops Worried about Genocide

From BBC News:

Methodist bishops from southern Africa have warned that a potential genocide could take place in Zimbabwe.

The bishops, meeting in Johannesburg, also called on South African president Thabo Mbeki to do more to help the rights of refugees leaving Zimbabwe.

The comments come six weeks after the start of mass demolitions of illegally built houses and stalls.

According to the United Nations, the destruction of shanty towns has left at least 200,000 people homeless.

The statement from the bishops was unequivocal: "We have on our hands a complete recipe for genocide; we're witnessing a tragedy of unprecedented enormity."

3 comments:

John said...

Although I am not intimately familiar with the situation, it would strike me as inevitable that once a government's so blatant use of force is legitimized, genocide is just around the corner.

I'll be glad to pray for your friends there.

What's a VIM team?

Chris said...

John,

Volunteers In Mission. They do diverse and amazing things. http://gbgm-umc.org/vim/

Theresa Coleman said...

I have invested some personal emotion in this developing story. I have a couple of good friends who have recently spent a year in Mutarae teaching at Africa University. I have one friend currently there teaching. I have two more friends from Zimbabwe who currently have appointments in Lousiana getting advanced degrees to go home and teach. I have long dreamed of teaching there myself.

To watch this country go through these very precitable motions -- this disturbs me greatly. And I just watched Hotel Rwanda again -- the pattern has been played out so very many times. I received a prayer request from my friend Alfred who is in Kenya right now -- things are so very bad in Africa.