Deported nun to get Luther King award

SISTER Janice McLaughlin, the Pittsburgh-born Maryknoll nun who was recently deported from Rhodesia after 22 days injail, will become the first white person to receive the annual Martin Luther King Freedom Award.
The award will be presented to her by the Commission for the Elimination of Racism of the Council of Churches of the City of New York in ceremonies on November 18.
A commission spokesman said the 15-member executive council decided that there was "no one more qualified" to receive the 1977 award.
He praised Sister McLaughlin as a "modern-day Joan of Arc" and said: "When white people take stands on black issues, we don't want just to sit with our hands behind our backs. We want to show them our support."
Sister Teresa Corby, of the Little Company of Jesus, who was expelled from Rhodesia after her photograph standing by a tortured African had appeared in the report of the Rhodesian Justice and Peace Commission, visited London last weekend.
She said she had personally approached the Rhodesian police to complain about the maltreatment of Africans by the security forces at her mission station.
Sister Teresa, who for the past three and a half years worked as a doctor in a tribal land south-east of Salisbury populated by 70,000 Africans, said the guerrillas who came to her mission station were very dedicated.
"They firmly believe in the work that they're doing, and that they are helping people realise that they have a future and that they will bring justice. The majority are Christians".
She added that she had been told by some guerrillas that she would be killed if she reported their presence to the Rhodesian government.
Sister Teresa was worried that she would not be replaced. "The people need a doctor". She added. "1 will never go back to Rhodesia, but I know that some day I will go to Zimbabwe."
Fr Joseph Paschal Slevin, an Irish missionary priest who stave evidence to the Justice and Peace Commission on the torture of Africans by the Rhodesian security forces, was declared a prohibited immigrant and expelled from Rhodesia last Friday.
Fr Slevin who has been in Rhodesia for 15 years, admitted that guerrillas had visited his Eastern Rhodesia mission and that he did not report them to the authorities.
Seven Catholic Church men and women have now been ordered to leave Rhodesia since 1970.
The Justice and Peace Commission said at the weekend that it was "extremely happy" to learn that Mr Ian Smith, the Rhodesian Prime Minister, would welcome an independent inquiry into allegations of atrocities committed by members of the Rhodesian security forces.