wfn.org | ELCA Sends $50,000 to Aid Kosovo Refugees

[NEWS <NEWS@ELCA.ORG>]

ELCA NEWS SERVICE

April 1, 1999

ELCA SENDS $50,000 TO AID KOSOVO REFUGEES
99-13-073-JB

     CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The International Disaster Response of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has sent $50,000 to aid
refugees displaced by the crisis in Kosovo.
     The funds were sent through Action by Churches Together (ACT) to
Norwegian Church Aid, which is working directly with refugees in and
around Kosovo, according to the Rev. Y. Franklin Ishida, director for
international communication, ELCA Division for Global Mission.  
     The ELCA is a member of ACT, a worldwide network of churches and
related agencies meeting human need through coordinated emergency
response. 
  While much relief work within Kosovo has been scaled back due to
security concerns, aid to neighboring countries continues as the influx
of refugees increases, Ishida said.
  In Macedonia, located on Kosovo's southern border, 20,000 ethnic
Albanian refugees are receiving relief supplies from a local partner
agency of Lutheran World Relief (LWR).  The partner, ACT-Macedonian
Center for International Cooperation (MCIC), is providing food and
clothing to Kosovar refugees in private homes, said Jonathan C.
Frerichs, LWR director of communication.  LWR works overseas in relief
and development on behalf of the ELCA and The Lutheran Church-Missouri
Synod.  
  LWR has sent 17 tons of clothing and quilts to Kosovo refugees in
Montenegro in recent months and is planning further material and
financial aid.  ACT-MCIC helped Bosnian refugees earlier in the breakup
of Yugoslavia, using local resources and overseas church support.
  Dr. Ishmael Noko, general secretary for the Lutheran World
Federation (LWF), urged all parties involved in the current Kosovo
conflict to return to the negotiating table.  Noko said the negotiations
should include broad representation of the Kosovar people, as well as
representatives of the main religious communities in the region. 
  "A strategy which pins its last and only hopes for securing peace
and justice upon the threat and use of violence, is a bankrupt
strategy," Noko said.
  On the use of violence on the ethnic Albanian community in Kosovo,
Noko said the LWF "abhors" the brutality of Serbian security forces upon
the people of Kosovo.
  Lutheran World Federation is a global communion of 124 Lutheran
churches, including the ELCA.  The ACT Coordinating Office is based in
Switzerland with the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of
Churches (WCC).
  Dr. Konrad Reiser, general secretary for the WCC, condemned the
violence in Kosovo in a pastoral letter addressed to the church leaders
of the three WCC member churches in Yugoslavia.  The churches include
the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Reformed Christian Church in Yugoslavia
and the Slovak Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession (Lutheran)
in Yugoslavia.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://www.elca.org/co/news/current.html