c. 2000 Religion News Service

Muslims Kill Dozens of Christians in Religious Clash in Indonesia

(RNS) More than 30 people were killed Thursday (May 25) and Friday (May 26) during an attack by Muslims on a Christian village on the island of Halmahera in eastern Indonesia, officials said.

Seven Muslims and 26 Christians died in violence in the village of Mamuya in the province of North Maluku, said Rudy Indago, an official at an Adventist Church in the provincial capital of Ternate. More than 70 people were injured.

“According to latest reports, 32 people were killed Thursday and two others on Friday,” said Brig. Gen. Max Tamaela, chief of the local military district. “The situation now is under control,” the Associated Press reported the official as saying.

The deaths this week boosted to 62 the number of people killed in religious violence between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia during the month of May. Fighting between the two groups in North Maluku and Maluku provinces _ known as the Spice Islands during the Dutch colonial era _ has claimed at least 2,000 lives since first breaking out in Ambon, the capital of the Moluccas province, in January of last year.

The Indonesian government has deployed security troops to the troubled area, but insists Christians and Muslims must resolve the disputes themselves even though previous attempts have failed.

Black Church Group Denounces Confederate Flag Compromise

(RNS) A group of African-American churches in South Carolina rejected Thursday (May 25) the state’s Confederate flag compromise, and announced its plans to support an expansion of the NAACP’s boycott of the state’s tourist industry.

The South Carolina Coalition of Black Church Leaders _ which claims 700,000 members statewide _ denounced a bill signed Tuesday (May 23) by Gov. Jim Hodges that would move the Confederate flag on July 1 from the Capitol to a pole near a Confederate monument on the Statehouse grounds.

Hodges said he believed the move would help unite South Carolinians, but the church coalition _ an affiliate of the Congress of National Black Churches _ said the bill is not comprehensive enough.

“We believe, as does our governor, that the time has come for reconciliation in our state,” said the Rev. Joe Darby, chairman of the coalition. “We do not believe, however, that the legislation signed by the governor will lead to reconciliation.”

He added, “Reconciliation can only come when the Confederate battle flag is not simply relocated to a new sovereign position, but is retired to a clearly historical position.”

The Coalition said it plans to support the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s call for an expansion of its 5-month-old tourism boycott to include the state’s movie industry, organized labor and collegiate sports.

Bishop De Roo Apologizes for Secret Failed Investment Scheme

(RNS) The retired Roman Catholic bishop of Victoria, British Columbia, Remi De Roo, has apologized to Catholics and taken full responsibility for investing church funds in secret deals that have left the diocese struggling to pay off a $17 million debt.

“I am emotionally shaken,” De Roo said on May 20. De Roo, 75, retired in 1999 after serving 37 years as bishop responsible for Vancouver Island, where he earned an international reputation as a church innovator and champion of social justice.

“I will work and pray, for the remainder of my life, if necessary, to help the diocese resolve this debt,” De Roo wrote in an emotional plea for forgiveness. He said he will also contribute part of his small church pension to reduce the diocese’s financial burden.

It was De Roo’s first comment since his successor, Bishop Raymond Roussin, revealed in February that the 90,000-member diocese was millions of dollars in debt because of failed investments in racehorses and speculative land near Olympia, Wash.

Even though a Vancouver Sun newspaper investigation revealed that the diocese’s former chief financial officer, Muriel Clemenger, an evangelical Christian, was directly linked to the failed money-making schemes, De Roo said he is ultimately at fault.

“Accepting personal responsibility, I blame no one,” he wrote in a letter to his successor released by De Roo’s lawyer.

“For months now I have been facing the decisions that were made, the painful events and the tragic burden brought upon the diocese of Victoria that resulted from my serious lack of vigilance and faulty decision making,”

In a terse written response on Sunday, Bishop Roussin said he was not consulted by De Roo on his apology and had yet to be visited by him.

Roussin said he is requesting a meeting with De Roo to determine “a way in which reconciliation and closure may be achieved.”

There have been no accusations that De Roo engaged in corruption through the failed investments. But the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has launched a canonical inquiry to investigate why proper protocol was not followed when the diocese made the multimillion investments.

UN Adopts Amendments on Child Sexual Abuse, Child Soldiers

(RNS) The United Nations on Thursday (May 25) adopted two new amendments designed to protect children from sexual abuse and forced military service.

The two additions to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child were approved by consensus by the General Assembly.

Countries that agree to the new terms, recommended by the U.N. Economic and Social Council, are required to make efforts to stop child prostitution, child pornography and the sale of children. Countries must also take steps to protect children from sexual abuse committed domestically or internationally.

The new amendments also raise the minimum age of military recruitments, requiring countries to “take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities” and ensure that people under the age of 18 “are not compulsorily recruited into their armed forces.”

Any country that has ratified or signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child can sign the new amendments, and may do so next month at a special General Assembly session or at a World Summit for social development in Geneva, Reuters reported. They can also sign the agreement at a U.N. Millennium Summit in New York in September.

The United States and Somalia are the only two countries that have not ratified the child rights convention. Although President Clinton has signed the convention, the Senate has never considered its ratification. The United States permits voluntary military enlistment at the age of 17, and has resisted efforts to raise the minimum age of military recruits from 15 to 18 under the child rights convention.

Quote of the Day: Jan LaRue, senior director of legal studies for the Family Research Council.

(RNS) “For the past seven years, the Department of Justice has neglected its street-sweeping duties on the information superhighway.”

_ LaRue, speaking at a congressional hearing on Internet pornography, said the Clinton administration has not done enough to keep pornography away from children on the Internet.

KRE END RNS