Journey for Justice

Published on February 21, 2009

Co-journeyer

Rev. Chris Fergusson, World Council of Churches (WCC) representative to the UN of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, said, “I am standing in a room filled with people who refused to allow God to be appalled, who refused to allow God’s own creation to be sullen by silence or inaction.”

The WCC provided huge support to the NCCP’s advocacy for human rights and justice, Reyes said.

Fergusson recited some verses of Isaiah, Chapter 59. “Justice has turned back. Righteousness stands at a distance. Truth stumbles …and whoever turns from evil is themselves despoiled. The Lord God is displeased that there was no justice and God was so appalled that there was no one to intervene.”

He said, “To imagine with Isaiah the sole call to do justice is the center of our faith but more than that there’s a second point that in the face of injustice what truly appalled God, the greatest call for the revulsion of the Divine is when no one stand up to say no to the injustice.”

Fergussson continued, “…[W]e also came to understand through your witness an analysis and understanding that you are on the quagmire of the second front of the war on terror, that you carry the burden for the expansion of a project, a system for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the very many.”

He said that those who are called to defend the people can see the impact of the said war on terror on peasants, workers, fisherfolk and indigenous people. He said that those who could stand up for these sectors of the Philippine society were the very ones that were targeted. Those were the people under list of battle, they were under watch list, he said.

“We therefore realize in the WCC that we have double responsibility because we are faced with a situation that wasn’t only calling on local government to account but having to put this accountability in terms of the discredited but growing war on terror led by a rogue empire,” Fergusson said.

“We thank you for the opportunity you gave us – to walk with you in our prophetic witness where we understood not just the accountability of the government killing its own people but that was part of our need to struggle against the empire hosting a project in the name of war on terror for economic and political benefits,” he said.

“We give thanks to the … all of those who gave their lives for justice and for all those who continue to give their lives so that the world will know that another world is possible with freedom and justice for all,” Fergusson said.(Bulatlat.com)

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