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ARGENTINA
Lutheran Pastor said that foreign debt crimes should not go unpunished
BUENOS AIRES, January. 31 (ALC). Many crimes have been and continue to be committed around the foreign debt: fraud, corruption, environmental destruction, enslavement, infanticide and death, said Argentine Pastor Angel F Furlan. These crimes "cannot go unpunished," he said.
Furlan said that a serious investigation of the debt made it possible to conclude that the true creditors "are us, the people and those responsible for the debt genocide should pay rather than complain."
The debt is responsible for an ongoing genocide that continues to take more human lives than the aberrant crimes of the military dictatorship, he said, after calling it a "fundamental tool in a model of domination."
Furlan, responsible for the Advocacy Program on the Illegitimate Foreign Debt of the Lutheran World Federation, participated last week in the World Social Forum held in Caracas. In his opinion, those responsible for these crimes should be declared guilty. "It is not enough that they give up their aim to collect an illegitimate debt, but they should repair and compensate the damage they have caused," he said.
He said it is not possible to build a more just society on a foundation of impunity, on a foundation of pardon for the powerful. "The debt should be audited, investigated, judged and together with it all those who participated in its perverse mechanism," he said.
Pastor Furlan and a group of citizens lead by Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel, have presented a judicial resource against the payment that the Argentine government made to the International Monetary Fund. "This payment points to a consecration of impunity and we cannot accept it," he said.
He lamented that incoming Bolivian President Evo Morales limited himself to calling for the condonation of the debt without interpreting the clamor of his people and the people's of South America "who do not demand condonation but justice, for a 'never again'".
"If we Churches want to be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ we must love the truth that brings justice (.) We Christians must insist on the fact that nothing good can be built on a foundation of illegitimacy, injustice, usury, corruption and impunity," concluded the Lutheran leader. -------------------- Latin American and Caribbean News Agency P.O. Box 14-225 Lima 14 Peru Telefax (511) 242-7312 E-mail: director@alcnoticias.org http: //www.alcpress.org