Lest We Forget: Remembering the Other 9/11

Today marks the 21st anniversary (September 11, 1988) of the destruction of St. Jean Bosco Church in the slums of Port-au-Prince. While Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide was giving mass, armed thugs working for the Henri Namphy regime entered the church and, in a siege that lasted several hours, massacred over twenty parishioners and injured many, many more before setting fire to the church. While Aristide managed to escape with his life, the incident eventually led to his expulsion from the Salesian order on December 15, 1988. Aristide, a liberation theologian and Roman Catholic priest, led the popular movement that led to the downfall of the Duvalier regime on February 7, 1986. Two decades (and two not-so successful Aristide presidencies) later, Haiti continues to be mired in poverty and violence.

Let us continue to work for peace and justice for the Haitian people.

Naga Insurgents Agree to Reconciliation

American Baptist missionary Dan Buttry writes:

For over twelve years I’ve been working for peace and reconciliation with the Nagas who live in northeast India and northwest Burma. The war between the Nagas and India has been going on since 1955. Then in 1975 a flawed peace agreement sparked division among the Nagas that has been as bloody as the conflict with India. In 1997 I participated with Ken Sehested of the Baptist Peace Fellowship and John Sundquist of International Ministries in the Atlanta Talks. Wati Aier was the leader of the Naga mediation team with whom we worked. All four of the major Naga factions at the time were due to attend, but at the last minute one of the largest groups pulled out. Though the participants drafted “The Atlanta Appeal” for reconciliation, the splits were still very deep and expressed in on-going violence.

Read the full story here.

Lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my!

From the Denver Post.