c. 2000 Religion News Service
NCC Official Hails Ruling on Elian Suit
(RNS) A National Council of Churches official hailed the decision Tuesday (March 21) by a Miami federal judge who declared that only the U.S. attorney general can grant political asylum to keep Elian Gonzalez in this country.
“I only wish it had come sooner,” said the Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the New York-based ecumenical organization, in a statement.
The NCC has worked with the Cuban Council of Churches in efforts to return the 6-year-old boy to his native country. He arrived on the Florida coast in November clinging to an inner tube after his mother and several others died in an apparent attempt to immigrate illegally to the United States.
The NCC helped facilitate a trip by Elian’s grandmothers to the United States in January, when they encouraged his return to his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
“Elian should have been home before Christmas,” Edgar said. “If a parent is loving, caring and not abusive, a child should be with his or her parent, and Juan Miguel Gonzalez is a loving father.”
U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore issued a 50-page decision that dismissed a lawsuit filed by Elian’s great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, who wants to keep Elian in the United States.
The judge said there were good intentions behind the suit but it could cause unintended harm because of “the reality that each passing day is another day lost between Juan Gonzalez and his son.”
Attorney General Janet Reno welcomed the ruling.
“We are pleased that the court has sustained our judgment that Elian should be reunited with his father,” she told reporters in Washington Tuesday. “We’re going to do everything that should be done after proper consultation to ensure that the child is reunited with his father in an orderly, fair and prompt way.”
Edgar has left a message with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service saying the NCC continues to be willing to assist in Elian’s return to Cuba.
Muslim Leaders Plead for Fair Trial for Al-Amin
(RNS) Representatives of four leading Muslim organizations gathered Tuesday (March 21) to call for a fair trail of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the former Black Panther who was arrested Monday night (March 20) in an Alabama shed.
Al-Amin, who was known in the 1960s as H. Rap Brown, was wanted on charges of fatally shooting an Georgia sheriff’s deputy and wounding another when the two deputies tried to serve Al-Amin with a warrant March 16.
After fleeing the Atlanta area, Al-Amin was found hiding in a shed outside Montgomery, Ala. Al-Amin now faces charges of fleeing persecution in addition to the murder charge.
In Washington, the four Muslim groups pleaded for a fair trial for Al-Amin and stressed his past community service.
“We want to ensure that Jamil receives proper legal representation,” the four groups said in a statement. “To that end, we will offer our services to his legal team in Atlanta.”
The coalition _ led by the American Muslim Council, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim American Society _ after previously calling on Al-Amin to surrender to authorities, sought to portray Al-Amin as a community activist who had been falsely accused in the past.
“We wish to remind everyone of Imam Jamil Al-Amin’s long-standing role as a community leader who had a positive impact on the lives of so many people,” the statement read. “The charges of Imam Jamil are especially troubling because they are inconsistent with what is known of his moral character and past behavior as a Muslim.”
In 1966, Al-Amin _ then known as Brown _ became a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Alabama. At the same time, he was the honorary minister for justice in the Black Panther party during a temporary alliance between the two organizations. One year later, when SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael was ousted, Brown was given the post.
Brown converted to Islam while serving a five-year prison sentence on robbery charges. After being released in 1976, Brown founded a mosque in Atlanta and became the spiritual leader, or imam, for a small Muslim community in Atlanta’s West End.
Falun Gong Urges U.N. Censure of China on Rights
(RNS) As the annual six-week conference of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights opened in Geneva Monday (March 20), more than 300 members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement held a silent protest outside the commission’s headquarters in that city to highlight China’s treatment of the outlawed group.
Falun Gong _ a blend of slow-motion exercises and Taoist and Buddhist practices _ was banned last July by Chinese authorities, who claimed the group was a public menace. Since then, more than 35,000 practitioners have been arrested and 5,000 more sent to labor camps without trial, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement.
China’s human rights record will be a key focus of the conference in Geneva. The 53-nation commission will review reports on the human rights records of more than two dozen countries, including Russia, Afghanistan, Iran and Cuba.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have both urged commission members to denounce China’s record on human rights.
While meeting with Chinese government officials earlier this month, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson criticized China’s human rights record, saying respect for freedom of speech, religion and association has deteriorated during the past year.
“It was important to speak out there,” Robinson said Monday (March 20), adding that it “is for the members of the commission to assume their responsibilities” with respect to human rights in China.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will address the commission Thursday (March 23) to encourage support for a U.S.-sponsored resolution that condemns China’s human rights record, but similar resolutions presented in the past decade have never been approved.
Russian Church Urges Chechnya Rebuilding
(RNS) The Russian Orthodox Church has called for stepped-up efforts to rebuild peaceful life in the breakaway and majority Muslim republic of Chechnya, expressed concern about civilian casualties during the recent war and called for “humane and legal” treatment of captured Chechen fighters.
The statement by the church’s synod _ the ruling assembly of 12 bishops chaired by Patriarch Alexii II _ was issued in mid-March, amid international criticism of Russia’s conduct of the war against Chechen separatists.
At the same time, however, Alexii defended Russians who died defending “the holy borders of our motherland” and criticized terrorist acts by the rebels.
“When people speak about the civilian casualties in Chechnya, they tend to forget that it was also innocent civilians who die (as victims of Chechen rebels) in Dagestan and in explosions at apartment buildings in Moscow, Buinasksk and Volgodonsk,” Alexii said in remarks quoted by Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news service.
Chechnya has been a trouble spot for Russia since 1994 when rebels launched a struggle for independence and Russian troops at the time failed to put down the rebellion. A peace accord signed in 1996 collapsed last August. In recent months there has been a brutal armed conflict for control of the Chechen capital of Grozny.
Nevertheless, the statement from the synod expressed the need for rebuilding life in Chechnya, especially in providing aid to the wounded, the refugees and families who had lost their “breadwinners.”
“One should have respect for the way of life prescribed by Islam, especially in the fields of education, family values and norms of behavior,” the synod statement said. “Otherwise the forces interested in the confrontation of Christianity and Islam will have a fresh excuse for … provocations.”
Georgetown University President to Step Down Next Year
(RNS) The president of the nation’s oldest Catholic university announced Monday (March 20) that he will step down next year after leading Georgetown University for 12 years, according to the Washington Post.
The Rev. Leo J. O’Donovan, president of Georgetown since 1989, said he will serve another year to oversee the transition to a new college president and to finalize the details of the sale of the university’s hospital.
O’Donovan, a 65-year-old Jesuit, led Georgetown as the school did well academically but faced some significant financial troubles. The school’s hemorrhaging teaching hospital lost $200 million over the past three years, prompting the school to sell the facility to MedStar Health Inc.
While the hospital’s troubles caused financial headaches for O’Donovan, the university’s endowment more than doubled to $740 million under his tenure. O’Donovan also suffered through an unsuccessful _ and very public _ attempt to remove Georgetown Law School’s dean, Judith C. Areen. Faced with a mutiny by faculty members, O’Donovan dropped the fight.
O’Donovan told the Post that he felt he was leaving the university in good financial shape, despite the loss of the hospital.
“I’ve alway thought a good president passes on the baton when he’s doing well,” O’Donovan said. “I ran track as a boy and I know passing on the baton is a big part of the race.”
Quote of the Day: Actor Denzel Washington
(RNS) “Yes, we live in a big house, with all this stuff and the cars in the garage. But one thing our children are getting, which I think helps, is very good religious instruction.”
Actor Denzel Washington, in an interview with USA Today, published Monday (March 20).
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