Page 2, 7th August 1992
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Vatican delegate slams western governments over refugees
IT is "incomprehensible" that two million refugees from the former Yugoslavia are without homes, work or food in one of the world's wealthiest continents, the Vatican's representative told western governments meeting in Geneva last week.
Bishop Alois Wagner, vicepresident of Cor Unum, was addressing a UN-sponsored gathering aimed at reaching international consensus on helping refugees from the civil war in Bosnia and Croatia. "An innocent civilian population is being deprived of even the most basic necessities and rights in the midst of an abundantly blessed and right continent".
The bishop accused western European governments of double standards when faced with the
Yugoslavian refugees. "When they came as guest-workers, they have been welcome in our countries. Now they are coming as oppressed peoples. What is the quality of the hospitality we are granting them? Those of us who will be eating tonight from abundantly full tables cannot claim that we are unable to share with those who have next to nothing."
The Geneva meeting failed to reach agreement with German pleas for a quota system to be established among the European partners on numbers of refugees to be accepted being blocked by Britain and France.
• CATHOLICS and Muslims in the north western areas of wartorn Bosnia "are condemned to
die of hunger" according to Church workers there. With Serbian forces keeping up a constant military threat, the situation in the Bosnian diocese of Banja Luka is "worsening
dramatically by the day" said Mgr Vladimir Stankovic, president of Caritas in neighbouring Croatia.
Attempts to get relief supplies through to Croatian Catholics and Bosnian Muslims trapped in Banja Luka have failed because of the Serbian military presence, he said.
Women religious were facing "brutal violence", Mgr Stankovic went on. And the local bishop has been cut off from outside contact for several weeks.
• CATHOLIC bishops in Slovenia, the first of the Yugoslavian republics to break free from the federation, have protested that what they say is a government campaign to limit church freedoms. Despite the fact that 83 per cent of the Slovenian population is Catholic, the old communist mentality of opposition to religion remains, said the bishops. "Changing mentalities will require decades," they said.
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