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Thursday October 25, 2007

The Lutheran Church firmly committed to the “NO” to the FTA

The Lutheran Church firmly committed to the “NO” to the FTA

ALC/CLAI, SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica, September 10, 2007

In February of this year, organizations of the Popular Ecumenical Movement of Costa Rica declared Taxi Heathrow Airport their opposition to the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between that country and the United States. Seven months later and less than a month before the referendum to take place on October 7, the organizations continue with their struggle to say NO to the Agreement.

In this process, the Costa Rican Lutheran Church (ILCO in Spanish) has raised its banner in support of the NO to the FTA, from the standpoint of a Christian ethics. The Reverend Melvin Jiménez Marin, Bishop of the ILCO, is one of the voices for the campaign. “To say NO to the FTA in Costa Rica in the referendum this coming October 7, is a duty of every Christian who considers him or herself to be following in the footsteps of the prophets and Jesus, who were always on the side of the poorest and least privileged. We already know what the FTAs have done in Mexico and Chile and now do in the Central American countries, bringing wealth to a few wealthy and more misery and poverty for the great majority,” said Jiménez Marin.

Within the context of that campaign, a panel with the theme, Central American Human Rights Report: Some implications of the FTA in the region and the present situation in Costa Rica, took place this past August 30 in the Ex Presidents’ Hall of the Legislative Assembly.

Dr. Rubén Chacón Castro, Coordinator of the Costa Rican Lutheran Church’s Legal Program, said that the 2005 – 2006 Central American Report when considered from a human rights perspective, is “a telling of the problem of human rights” as seen by different organizations within the civil society that are involved in the matter of human rights in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama.

The report deals with matters such as violence and impunity, violence against women, against children, an analysis of the normative deterioration in the legal guarantees of human rights and the failure to comply with the international commitments with regard to these matters.

According to Chacón, this report seeks to provide the foundations for three matters: 1) The human rights problem has an underlying economic sub-strata that will undergo modification in its most negative orientation, should the FTA be approved; 2) the report is programmed so as to be an alternative reference source for the study of human rights in the Central American countries, and; 3) it is an effort on the part of organizations within the Central American civil society that are directly involved with human rights.

In this context, Bishop Jiménez Marin pointed out that “the churches cannot be indifferent; there is no separation between faith and reality,” and so making clear the firm support of the ILCO on behalf of the mobilized social organizations. He also extended the call, asking the Evangelical peoples to take up an active position in the coming referendum, keeping in mind that the FTA is a tool for the violation of human rights and an ill-fated decision for Costa Rica.