Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) -- Catholics in the Balkan nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina have become "second-class" citizens and, in some regions, are on the verge of extinction, said a group of Bosnian bishops visiting Rome.
While the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords brought an end to ethnic violence and bloodshed between Serbs, Muslims and Croats, the bishops said the accords were flawed and unfairly enforced, resulting in a lack of true peace, justice and adequate human rights protections in the country.
On the eve of the start of their weeklong "ad limina" visit to the Vatican, Bosnian Cardinal Vinko Puljic of Sarajevo, Bishop Franjo Komarica of Banja Luka, and Auxiliary Bishop Pero Sudar of Sarajevo spoke to journalists at a Feb. 22 press conference hosted by Italy's Catholic Action movement.
The bishops appealed to the international community to help transform Bosnia-Herzegovina from its current two-government existence to a unified, decentralized democracy that would no longer be split along ethnic lines.
The bishops said they would be informing Pope Benedict XVI about their appeal and the situation of the country's Catholics.
The 1995 accords, signed by the presidents of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, divided Bosnia-Herzegovina into two areas -- one administered by ethnic Serbs and another by a Muslim-Croat federation. This, however, has left the mostly Catholic Croat minority with little to no political power in both areas, the bishops said.
Cardinal Puljic, who is also head of the Bosnian bishops' conference, said Catholics "are in the minority; slowly we are becoming second-class citizens in our own country."
The democratic principles and protections outlined by the Dayton accords do not carry the same weight for the different ethnic groups, he said. The bigger groups, that is the Serbs and Muslims, have the most power and have more rights than the smaller groups, he said.
The cardinal said that more than 10 years after the Dayton accords, Bosnia-Herzegovina is "a confused country" whose complex political structure is unsustainable, unjust and must be changed.
Bishop Komarica told journalists that dividing the country and granting powers based on ethnicity were some of the many "fatal mistakes" created by the accords.
The present situation of "rule of the strongest" not only prevents the country from developing into a healthy, multiethnic country, it also has legitimized ethnic cleansing by dividing the country along ethnic lines and granting majority rule to the predominant ethnic group, he said.
He also said displaced Croats and Catholics have been "hindered from returning and staying on."
Before the start of the 1992-95 war, there were 820,000 Catholics throughout the country's four archdioceses, he said, adding, "Today, 10 years after the war's end, there are only 460,000."
He said his diocese of Banja Luka was the most affected: 120,000 Catholics have dwindled to barely 40,000.
The dramatic situation of the Catholic Church in Bosnia-Herzegovina "is constantly forgotten, ignored and treated as something normal and acceptable by national and international political leaders, not as a serious crime of extermination of a people and the Catholic Church" in this Balkan nation, said Bishop Komarica.
As long as the rights and freedoms of Croats are denied and their political clout is stifled, there will be no true peace in the country, and Catholics there will disappear, he said.
Bishop Sudar, meanwhile, emphasized the importance of stimulating the economy of a country where unemployment has risen to 48 percent. Those who do have a job sometimes must wait months or years for their wages, he added.
While government leaders are looking at some proposals to revise the political structures the Dayton accords established, "nothing is proposed to re-establish structures which help to improve the economy, to favor the return of refugees and to safeguard human rights and equality among the peoples," he said.
He said a fairer balance of political power among Croats, Muslims and Serbs is needed as well as a revamped legislature and executive branch of government in which members of one region would not be able to "outvote members of the other two" regions.
From Catholic News Service
Also-
Vatican to Muslims: practice what you preach
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
PARIS (Reuters) - After backing calls by Muslims for respect for their religion in the Mohammad cartoons row, the Vatican is now urging Islamic countries to reciprocate by showing more tolerance toward their Christian minorities.
Roman Catholic leaders at first said Muslims were right to be outraged when Western newspapers reprinted Danish caricatures of the Prophet, including one with a bomb in his turban. Most Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.
After criticizing both the cartoons and the violent protests in Muslim countries that followed, the Vatican this week linked the issue to its long-standing concern that the rights of other faiths are limited, sometimes severely, in Muslim countries.
Vatican prelates have been concerned by recent killings of two Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria. Turkish media linked the death there to the cartoons row. At least 146 Christians and Muslims have died in five days of religious riots in Nigeria.
"If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us," Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State (prime minister), told journalists in Rome.
"We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts," Foreign Minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo told the daily Corriere della Sera.
Reciprocity -- allowing Christian minorities the same rights as Muslims generally have in Western countries, such as building houses of worship or practicing religion freely -- is at the heart of Vatican diplomacy toward Muslim states.
Vatican diplomats argue that limits on Christians in some Islamic countries are far harsher than restrictions in the West that Muslims decry, such as France's ban on headscarves in state schools.
Saudi Arabia bans all public expression of any non-Muslim religion and sometimes arrests Christians even for worshipping privately. Pakistan allows churches to operate but its Islamic laws effectively deprive Christians of many rights.
Both countries are often criticized at the United Nations Human Rights Commission for violating religious freedoms.
"ENOUGH TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK" Continued ...
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