September 8, 2004

CHICAGO - The Council of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) said it was "horrified by the news of the bloodshed" in Beslan, Russia, where more than 300 hostages were massacred last week by an international group of armed insurgents believed to be associated with rebels in the Russian province of Chechnya.

The council's chair is the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, LWF president and presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), an LWF member. It met Sept. 1-7 at Chavannes- de-Bogis, Switzerland, near Geneva, where LWF is based.

In a public statement, the council described the incident as an "atrocity [that] evokes a particularly strong sense of revulsion, because the armed insurgents who planned it and carried it out deliberately targeted children. No cause can justify such inhumanity."

The council action also named other violent attacks in recent days on civilians. It cited the suicide bombing of two buses in Israel, in which 16 people were killed; a bombing in Iraq in which 17 people died; recent Israeli missile attacks and military incursions in Gaza resulting in civilian deaths; the execution of 12 Nepalese workers by militants in Iraq; the deaths of 10 people in a suicide bomb attack in a Moscow train station; and the deaths of 89 people in apparent simultaneous bomb attacks aboard two aircraft that left the same Moscow airport.

"The people most directly affected by these attacks were non- combatants whose only 'crime' was to be associated in the minds of their attackers with a perceived enemy or to be seen as representative of 'the other,'" the statement said. Attacks on civilians violate the fundamental religious and ethical principle that human life and dignity is to be valued and respected, the council said.

"The LWF condemns all such atrocities regardless of the claimed justification," the statement said. "Political objectives cannot be achieved through such inhumane means."

The council called on the global LWF communion to "pray for an end to the violence in the world and in human hearts, for the transformation of those whose hearts have been hardened by violence, and the liberation of those trapped in its vicious cycle."

In a separate action the council condemned attacks by militia against communities in the Darfur region of Sudan and expressed dismay at the refusal by the government of Sudan to accept an adequate force of international peacekeepers in the region.

To express solidarity with the victims of the violence and with its ecumenical partners, the council also endorsed a call by Catholic bishops of Sudan for help from the international community to prevent the "terror, rape, torture, murder and slavery" and "annihilation of an entire ethnic group in Darfur," the action said. The LWF governing body also urged the government of Sudan to enable delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people of the region, and for all parties to the conflict to negotiate a just and peaceful settlement. The council expressed deep concern about the unfolding humanitarian crisis in the region and affirmed LWF support for delivery of humanitarian assistance through Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, the global network of churches and related agencies responding to emergencies worldwide. The LWF is a founding member of the Geneva-based ACT.

The council's Program Committee on International Affairs and Human Rights recommended the action. Diadem Depayso, Lutheran Church in the Philippines, chairs the program committee and presented the recommendation to the council. She reminded members of a 2002 council resolution that addressed protection of civilians in times of war. The LWF currently has 138 member churches in 77 countries with nearly 65 million Lutherans worldwide.

ELCA News Service
Information for this report was provided by Lutheran World Information, Geneva, Switzerland.