Christmas: With Christ, God has injected himself into history. With the birth of Christ, God’s reign is now inaugurated in human time. On this night, as every year for twenty centuries, we recall that God’s reign is now in this world and that Christ has inaugurated the fullness of time. His birth attests that God is now marching with us in history so that we do not go alone. Humans long for peace, for justice, for a reign of divine law, for something holy, for what is far from earth’s realities. We can have such a hope, not because we ourselves are able to construct the realm of happiness that God’s holy words proclaim,...
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When God chooses Mary as the instrument, when God wants to enter this world in the manger in Bethlehem, this is not an idyllic family occasion, but rather the beginning of a complete reversal, a new ordering of all things on this earth. There, where our understanding is outraged, where our nature rebels, where our piety fearfully keeps its distance – there, precisely there, is where God loves to be. For those who are great and powerful in this world, there are two places where their courage fails them, which terrify them to the very depths of their souls, and which they dearly avoid. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ....
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RIGHTS-COLOMBIA By Constanza Vieira ULM, Germany, Dec 14, 2010 (IPS) – “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist….” The celebrated quote by German anti-Nazi Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller remains frighteningly relevant today in some parts of the world, like Colombia. Every 10th of December, when the world marks International Human Rights Day, groups of high school children in the southern German city of Ulm visit one of the first concentration camps for political opponents established by the Nazis, in 1933. A total of...
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GUATEMALA By Danilo Valladares GUATEMALA CITY, Dec 12, 2010 (IPS) – Nearly three years into President Álvaro Colom’s four-year term, Guatemala’s indigenous people have seen little improvement in their lives — and they represent approximately half the country’s population. “The situation of the native peoples may be even worse than before. Poverty has increased, the quality of education is very poor, and there is no intercultural perspective in health services,” Eduardo Sacayón, director of the Interethnic Studies Institute at Guatemala’s University of San Carlos, told IPS. The social-democratic President Colom promised when he was sworn in, Jan. 14, 2008, that he would govern “with a Maya face,” in favour of the poor and excluded....
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“The moment has come to discern the signs of the times, seize the opportunity, and expand the view.” – John XXIII. We are pleased to welcome our readers to the online monthly edition of Signs of the Times. We will begin publishing a monthly version of Signs of the Time, beginning in January 2011.
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The Latin America Working Group Education Fund (LAWG) and the U.S. Office on Colombia (USOC) released a new report today Breaking the Silence: In Search of Colombia <http://lawg.org/storage/documents/Colombia/BreakingTheSilence.pdf> ‘s Disappeared revealing official figures that more than 50,000 people have been disappeared in Colombia and telling the stories of the victims’ families’ search for truth and justice. If possible, please distribute it to your networks and help us raise awareness about this important issue. You will find the press release below. To read the report in English go to: http://lawg.org/storage/documents/Colombia/BreakingTheSilence.pdf To read the report in Spanish go to: http://lawg.org/storage/documents/Colombia/RompiendoElSilencio.pdf
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TASSC International Thanks Friends & Fellow Survivors for Your Support in Commemorating the Life and Legacy of Patrick Rice On Friday evening, October 1, friends and fellow survivors commemorated the life and legacy of Patrick Rice at a Memorial Service in Washington DC. A hundred people gathered to remember their friend and pay tribute to a life dedicated to the defense of human rights. Juan Mendez, one of those who paid tribute to Rice - and a fellow torture survivor from Argentina who went on to work untiringly for the defense of human rights - spoke movingly of his friendship and admiration for Rice’s life-long commitment to end torture and enforced disappearance. Professor Mendez was recently named United Nations Special Rapporteur on...
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Argentine courts have launched an investigation into crimes committed at the ESMA Navy Mechanics School during the nation’s military dictatorship. The landmark human rights trial is one of the most far-reaching attempts to bring crimes of Latin America’s bloody past to justice. For more than three decades, survivors and their families awaited the trial that finally began on Dec. 11, 2009. During Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship, the ESMA Navy Mechanics School served as a clandestine detention center, used to torture and disappear thousands of people. Now 17 former ESMA officers face charges of human rights abuses, torture, and murder. The ESMA trial was scheduled to begin in November but was postponed at the request of...
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By Mario Osava SALVADOR, Brazil, Jan 31, 2010 (IPS) One of the greatest challenges facing the world today is to attend to the urgent social needs of the planet’s population, and particularly the one billion people living “on the brink of survival”, while dealing with the equally urgent demands of the environment. This warning came from Brazilian Social Development Minister Patrus Ananias at the Thematic World Social Forum meeting held here in the capital of the northeastern state of Bahia. Meeting the basic needs of the one billion human beings suffering from hunger today will require the production of massive amounts of food and other goods, which will inevitably affect the environment, he noted.
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