"The National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP) denounces in the strongest terms possible, the attacks made by the United States on Afghanistan in order to flush out the alleged suspects on the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. No doubt, thousands of civilians will be displaced. Innocent lives will be sacrificed. The wheels of violence will turn even more feverishly with an unstoppable intensity that will rock the world. Many governments have aligned themselves with the super power, offering their resources for a senseless and unchristian campaign. What blind subservience!

The US Government, by launching air-strikes, has shown a shameful insensitivity to the call of the world’s people for restraint and sobriety, and the use of peaceful and diplomatic means to handle the situation. By claiming that all their targets are military installations, it has revealed such an appalling loss of historical memory. How can George W. Bush not remember that Afghanistan has not even recovered from the war that the United States itself has financed... that this is a country gripped by grinding poverty because of that war? And when the President says that the military attacks will be accompanied with food, medicine an supplies to the starving and suffering because Afghanistan is a friend of the US, he only exposes a rhetoric that is impossible to fathom.

The NCCP call on its constituents to offer prayers of illumination for all world leaders that they may never more be blind and deaf to the cries of the people who are saying that this US-led aggression on Afghanistan is not supported by the collective will of the world’s peoples. We call on the churches and Christian organizations to unceasingly summon the United States with strong denunciations of the latter’s bullying tactics. We must expose the glaring inconsistency between this grave terrorist act of the US on the hapless Afghans and its own call for nations to give them "their tired, their poor, their huddled masses yearning to be free..." In deep supplication, let us vigilantly watch the events as they unfold and tirelessly raise our voices united for peace, justice and freedom.

(SGD.) MOST. REV. TOMAS A. MILLAMENA
Chairperson

(SGD.) MS. SHARON ROSE JOY RUIZ-DUREMDES General Secretary"

Back to list of statements