c. 1999 Religion News Service
Norway establishes fund for Holocaust victims
(RNS) Norway has become the first nation occupied by the Nazis in World War II to establish a fund for Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
The $58 million fund, announced Thursday (March 11), will be split between Jewish victims of the death camps and their families, and Jewish organizations.”We can never put right the wrongs committed against the Jewish people, but the government believes that a historic and moral settlement must be made,”Health Minister Dagfinn Hoeybraaten told parliament. The parliament voted unanimously to establish the fund.
About 2,200 Jews were arrested in Norway during the Nazi occupation in 1942 and a total 767 were deported to the Nazi death camps _ mostly Auschwitz _ and just 30 survived.
Jewish groups hailed the vote, despite some complaints by families that the limit on individual payments was too low, Reuters reported.
Hoeybraaten said the World Jewish Congress had in the past hailed the planned fund as a model for other nations.”If it can be so, we will be happy,”the health minister said.
Parliamentarians were unanimous in accepting that Norwegians were partly to blame for the abuse of the Jews in the country.”The Nazis were the driving force … but almost all of the Jews were arrested by Norwegian police,”said Erik Solheim of the opposition Socialist Left Party.
Hindu group in India urges curbs on conversion
(RNS) A leader of India’s main conservative Hindu organization says there is an international plan to convert Hindus to Christianity and he wants to put a curb on conversions.”There is a well-orchestrated program of international Christian bodies to spread Christianity in Asia and parts of Africa,”K. Sudarshan, joint general secretary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh told reporters Thursday (March 11) during the group’s convention.
The RSS, the ideological parent of India’s ruling national Bharatiya Janata Party, has been blamed for instigating a series of recent attacks on Christians and their churches and chapels. The RSS and other Hindu groups have denied involvement in the attacks and, in turn, accused the Christians of using bribery to force conversion of India’s poor to Christianity.”There should be appropriate curbs on religious conversions,”Sudarshan said.
He also said re-conversion was going on as well, Reuters reported.”It was encouraging to find that our efforts had borne fruits and Christians in many parts of India had already shown their inclination to return to their roots,”he said.
Christians make up between 2 and 3 percent of India’s population of 950 million people but Sudarshan said international mission organizations have made the country a prime target.”All the focus is now on India, because obviously here was a more vulnerable ground where there was still enough scope for more conversions,”he said.
Scottish churches ask U.S. help in `banana war’ trade dispute
(RNS) Scottish church leaders have asked their counterparts in the United States to intervene in the”banana war”trade dispute threatening the survival both of Caribbean islands dependent on their banana crop and of the cashmere industry in the Scottish borders.
In the dispute with the European Union over its preference for bananas grown by former European colonies, the United States is threatening to impose a 100 percent tariff on certain imports from Europe, including cashmere knitwear from Scotland.
In an open letter to U.S. church leaders written with the support of such Scottish officials as the Rev. Alan Main, moderator of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, and Cardinal Tom Winning, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, the Rev. Erik Cramb, the Scottish churches industrial mission co-ordinator, said spinning and knitting cashmere was an industry”vital”to the struggling economy of the Scottish Borders, a region which in recent times has suffered a number of manufacturing job losses.”There is now a widespread bewilderment in the Borders at finding themselves caught up as victims in a trade dispute that seems to have no connection with either their industry or their locality,”he wrote.
The churches are also concerned about Caribbean countries”whose economies have no flexibility, no ability to make any quick diversification in response to changing trade patterns, and for whom the loss of their European banana markets would be an economic disaster far beyond our worst experiences in this country,”Cramb said.
Cramb said Scottish church leaders understood it is not the intention of the U.S. government to force either Scottish or Caribbean workers out of work.”But that would appear to be the inevitable outcome unless another course is steered,”he said.
Report warns of reverse Boston Tea Party over genetically altered food
(RNS) A Church of Scotland report is warning that two centuries after the Boston Tea Party the United States may find itself in the reverse situation to protest the imposition of genetically modified foods on the European market.”The country that served Britain the painful lesson of the Boston Tea Party may ironically yet face a Rotterdam Soya Bean Fest if the public of Europe metaphorically throw genetically modified soya and maize into the North Sea, not because they do not like them, but because they do not like imperialist behavior any more than the residents of Boston did,”said a report by the Church of Scotland’s Society, Religion and Technology Project in a report published for the church’s May 8-14 general assembly.
The issue of genetically altered or modified food has become a growing issue in Britain and Europe.
In its report, the task force said there need not be any moral objections to Christians eating genetically modified foodstuffs but that two key issues of justice must be considered: the commercial imposition of genetically modified food, and the implications for the developing world.”The introduction into the European Union of Monsanto’s genetically modified soya and Novartis’ maize, unlabelled and unsegregated, reveals disturbing trends about the power structures which combined to enforce these products over the head of any proper sense of public involvement,”the report said.”The failure of the companies to offer to segregate modified and unmodified products is now seen as an unacceptably aggressive attitude towards the public of another nation.”It is the more disturbing that this came about with the express approval of the European Community, more anxious to avoid a trade war than to take account of European public values,”the report added.
The report called for more public involvement and”democratic accountability”in the labelling, advertising and marketing of genetically altered food.
It also expressed concern that genetically altered food, often defended as a means of feeding the world’s hungry, was not getting to the less-developed nations.”At present the vast majority of the products and the research and development is aimed at profitable western supermarket shelves, not the truly hungry of the world, who cannot afford to pay,”the report said.”Moreover, the benefits of these products seem primarily to be convenience for multinational companies, rather than meeting a widespread human need.”
Prism Awards honor honest Hollywood portrayals of drug abuse
(RNS) The CBS prime-time hit”Promised Land”and part of the NBC series of”E.R.”were honored at the third annual Prism Awards for accurate TV and film portrayals of drug and tobacco use and addiction March 9.”Promised Land”won this year’s Prism for best television dramatic series episode.”E.R.”was honored for best prime-time dramatic”continuing storyline,”about drug addiction. Other honorees included the Miramax African-American-themed film,”Down in the Delta,”and NBC TV for its”The More You Know,”anti-drug public service commercials.”Many people in Hollywood are doing a spectacular job at educating Americans, both young and old, about the true nature of drug abuse and addiction and its consequences for all aspects of their lives,”said Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which co-sponsors the awards along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the non-profit Entertainment Industries Council.
Prism’s sponsors also are spending $1 million to promote more accurate portrayals of drug and tobacco use, including a consulting hotline for screenwriters and producers.”Promised Land”star Gerald McRaney, who is also a reserve peace officer in Jefferson Parish near New Orleans, told Religion News Service,”it’s not enough to lock people up. We can’t build enough jail space to handle this (drug) problem.”One of the primary elements of any sort of spiritual values, whether it’s Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, whatever it is, is the notion of compassion,”McRaney said.”There are so many things that just dovetail between this sort of (anti-drug) movement, our doing our job in the entertainment business and spiritual values. They just seem to dovetail; compassion, forgiveness, effort. You know, religion isn’t something you just strap on in the morning and it serves you the rest of the day. It’s something you have to work at.” Quote of the day: Police Chief Bill Landry, Gonzales, La.
(RNS)”The safest place in the world I always thought was a church and now that sanctuary has been broken.” _ Gonzales, La. Police Chief Bill Landry, commenting on the shooting of four people, including the alleged gunman’s wife and child, during a church service Wednesday (March 10) at the New St. John Fellowship Baptist Church.
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