wfn.org | ALC Noticias 18 August 2004 Brazil, Ghana, Columbia

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

ALC NEWS SERVICE
E-mail: director@alcnoticias.org

CONTENT

BRAZIL: Campaign proposes half hour without TV
BRAZIL: Black Evangelical among the 50 invisible heroes of Sao Paulo
GHANA: WARC Assembly concludes with message for Churches
COLOMBIA: 35,000 children are the victims of sexual abuse

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Brazil
Campaign proposes half hour without TV
By Micael Vier B.

BRASILIA, Aug 12 (alc). The Human Rights and Minorities Commission, 
together with other entities, has called on Brazilian society to turn off 
the television for 30 minutes on October 17, World Day to Democratize 
Communication.

This will be a way to clearly demonstrate Brazilian societys lack of 
satisfaction with television programming, said the campaign coordinator, 
Congressman Orlando Fantazzini, of the Workers Party (PT) of Sao Paulo.

In an interview with ALC the president of the Gaucha Radio and Television 
Association (AGERT).
Alfonso Antunes da Motta, said that all manifestations on the part of 
society should be respected.

For Motta, more important than the debate that the campaign seeks to take 
to society is the discussion about technology and rules governing 
communication media.

Brazilian television is a reference around the world, argued Alfonso da 
Motta, recalling the social contribution this media offers society. The 
stations should self-regulate based on ethical precepts, in order to attend 
societys wishes, he said.

When questioned about the power to establish the public agenda that is 
attributed to television, the head of AGERT said that no media has that 
power. That depends on each individual, the television viewer is the 
person who controls what they watch or what they decide to stop watching, 
he said.

Take Action Against Degradation in Television is the slogan of the campaign 
for October 17. The legislatures Radio Chamber, associated with the 
campaign, has produced spots that will be distributed to all radio stations 
in the country.

The campaign promotes democratizing access to communication media, 
respecting the publics right to ethical programming and the defense of a 
public television system.

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BRAZIL
Black Evangelical among the 50 invisible heroes of Sao Paulo

SAO PAULO, August 12 (ALC). Evangelical Black militant Hernani Francisco da 
Silva, of the Brazil for Christ Pentecostal Church, is one of the 50 
invisible heroes that help improve this Brazilian city.

These individuals appear in the book invisible heroes written by 
journalist and writer Giberto Dimenstein, presented in the Brazilian Museum 
of Sculpture in this city last week, which pays tribute to Sao Paulos 450 
anniversary.

The book, said the author, is about 50 men and women who enthusiastically 
collaborated to improve Sao Paulo. In its Greek root, enthusiasm means to 
have God in your heart.

These are simple people, not very visible, but extremely powerful, said 
Dimenstein. It is not a book about good and generous people, about somber, 
sad missionaries, pained for their neighbor. It is about joy, the ability 
to change oneself, changing the destiny of others. Their beauty, captured 
in the photos, is the divine mix of joy, heroism and invisibility, he said.

They are people who came from different parts of Brazil, noted Dimenstein, 
but did not accept what they saw in Sao Paulo and sought solutions in 
places where, for many, there was only discouragement, lack of perspective, 
impossibility, death. We need the heroic invisibility of these 
enthusiastic beings so that we can hope for a better future, he said.

Da Silva discovered Black citizenship in a street in Sao Paulo, during 
commemorations for the century of the Abolishment of Slavery in 1988. I 
had never seen so many Black people together. I began to follow the march. 
I was excited. That is where the idea of discussing the racial problem in 
the Church was born and recovering the self esteem and identity of Black 
people based on religious teaching, he said.

I could have created a Church just for Black people. But, that was not the 
objective. I wanted to achieve a change in values on the part of 
Evangelical leaders, he said. Da Silva appears in the book of anonymous 
heroes because of his innovative work geared toward putting an end to 
racism in Evangelical Churches.

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GHANA
WARC Assembly concludes with message for Churches

By Fernando Oshige

ACCRA, Aug 12 (alc). With a message aimed at member Churches, calling on 
them to live their faith without ignoring the brutal suffering and the 
desperate clamor of millions of people in the world who suffer poverty and 
marginalisation, the 24th General Assembly of the World Alliance of 
Reformed Churches (WARC) concluded here.

According to the Accra Letter, participants said that to confess their 
faith and offer their lives to Jesus Christ demanded that they oppose 
everything that strips people of a life in fullness.

The assembly, which took place in the University of Ghana from July 30 to 
August 12, brought together more than 800 people, including delegates from 
217 Presbyterian, Reformed and United Churches from 100 countries, as well 
as observers, invited guests, journalists and visi! tors. The theme of the 
assembly was That All May Have Life in Fullness.

The final messages also refer to the impact of the visit to Elmina and Cape 
Coast, 200 kilometers from Accra. In these forts, between 1540 and 1850 
millions of people were held prisoner and then sold as slaves to the
Americas.

In Elmina, participants in the assembly read fragments of Psalm 132 in the 
chapel and imagined the Reformed Christians of that era worshiping God 
while the prisoners suffered and died in the cells.

How can faith be so far from life? How could they separate their spiritual 
experience from the torturous physical suffering that wracked the slaves?, 
they asked.

The Assembly warned that today the integrity of Christian faith is in 
danger, just as it was for those who worshiped God in Elmina. Participants 
said they discovered the danger of committing the same sin as those whose 
blindness we condemn. Todays world is divided between those who worship in 
a comfortable situation and those enslaved by world economic injustice and 
the destruction of the environment, they said.

This is not just one more theme on the agenda: it is related to the essence 
of our faith confession. How can we affirm that we believe in Jesus Christ 
as Lord of Life and not oppose everything that denies the promise of the 
fullness of life to the world?, it said.

Delegates, representing 75 million believers, also emphasized the need to 
cultivate a profound spirituality. We are called to a spiritual commitment 
against evil and for that our lives must be deeply rooted in the power of 
the Spirit of God, they said.

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COLOMBIA
35,000 children are the victims of sexual abuse

By William Delgado

BOGOTA, August 12 (alc). According to a recent UNICEF report, the number of 
children induced to turn to prostitution has been increasing in the past 
decade and the age of those children is also increasingly younger. Some are 
even younger than 10.

According to the report, approximately 35,000 children under the age of 18 
are sexually exploited in Colombia. The most frequent method used to 
recruit victims, the report said, is to offer them work abroad. The most 
common destinations are Japan, Spain, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, 
Hong Kong and Singapore.

Colombia has become one of the main operating centers for international 
child prostitution and pornography rings. Authorities have detected 
connections with networks in Europe and Asia, said Manuel Manrique Castro, 
UNICEF representative for Colombia and Venezuela. The highest risk group 
is made up of children aged 5 to 14, it said.

  Unicef director Carol Bellamy said it is not possible to continue 
tolerate these shameful abuses of the rights of the child, that have 
constituted a horrible secret. She underscored that it depends on 
governments, bodies responsible for applying the law, international 
organizations and all levels of civil society, to ensure that the 
elimination of sexual exploitation and abuse receive the same priority and 
sustained character, accompanied by national measures.

While Colombia has adopted laws against violence against children, the 
drama continues. In part, because more than half of the population 
displaced by violence over the past year has been children (1,100,000), 
according to Unicef.

The armed conflict in Colombia has recruited close to 10,000 girls and 
boys, it said.

Despite the fact that, according to the UN general Assembly, an Action Plan 
is being implemented and the aim is that by 2010 it will be possible to 
protect children from all forms of sexual exploitation, the real situation 
is different.

In 2001, the Legal Medical Branch in Colombia carried out 13,352 
examinations for abuse or violence, of which 8,745 were cases involving 
women and 1,210 were men. Of those 86 percent were under the age of 18 and 
the most affected age group were 10 to 14 (37 percent), followed by 5 to 9 
(25 percent), 15 to 17 (14 percent) and 1 to 4 (10 percent).

There was also an increase in denouncements: of 10,716 in 1997 it increased 
to 12,485 in 1999 and 13,352 in 2001.

In order to eradicate child prostitution, child pornography, sexual 
tourism, kidnapping and trafficking for exploitation, it is essential to 
take maximum advantage of their recognition as serious crimes and the 
International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms Discrimination 
Against Women, affirmed UNICEF.

On the other hand, an article published recently in the daily El Pais, 
stated that in the northern Del Valle zone many girls, according to the 
Colombian Institute of Family Well-being are obligated to turn to 
prostitution by their parents and there are mothers who teach their 
10-year-old girls to dance sensually at the age of 10 to exploit them 
sexually, said Jaime Mondragon, ICBF official.
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