Reports 1995-1998 Edited by Dwain C. Epps

Central Committee Statement welcoming the award of the Nobel Prize for Peace to the International Campaign To Ban Landmines

Issued in Geneva, 10 October 1997.

The World Council of Churches and many of its member churches around the world actively support and participate in this Campaign to ban the production, stockpiling, sale and use of anti-personnel mines.

The WCC Central Committee encouraged member churches in 1995 “to collect signatures through local congregations to protest the manufacturing of anti-personnel mines,” and to press for the immediate clearance of those already deployed. Last month, the Central Committee asked the Council’s officers to send a letter of encouragement to participants in the Oslo Diplomatic Conference on Landmines. In their message to the President of the Conference, General Secretary Konrad Raiser and His Holiness Aram I, Moderator of the Central Committee, expressed the hope that the agreement being finalized there would be a “true ban treaty without any exemptions and reservations,” and urged “all states to ratify it.”

“The churches have first-hand experience of the terrible human suffering which landmines inflict on the most vulnerable people caught in zones of conflict, particularly peasant women and children,” the WCC spokesperson said. “These indiscriminate weapons belong to a by-gone age when the super-powers fought proxy wars in the world’s poorest countries. The churches vigorously protested this practice then, and will not accept today the ‘national security’ arguments used by some states to justify their refusal to join in a comprehensive ban. We hope that nations who remain undecided or who oppose the present treaty will take this new opportunity to announce that they will join the rest of the world in Ottawa on 3-4 December in signing this historic document.”

Small Arms

Congratulations on British vote to ban privately-owned handguns

Letter to H.E. Prime Minister Tony Blair, 12 June 1997.

I wish to congratulate you and the House of Commons for the moral courage and wisdom you have exercised in adopting by an overwhelming majority the Firearms (Amendment) Bill extending the earlier ban on large-calibre handguns, thereby outlawing all privately-owned handguns in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Through this stunning action, you have not only kept faith with the families of the victims of the tragedy of Dunblane, but have offered to all the people of the land a new sense of security. You have kept your promise to the people. You have established a political and moral precedent for the nations.

Through our newly established Programme to Overcome Violence, and especially through our present global initiative, “Peace to the City,” the long-standing opposition of the World Council of Churches to the proliferation of weapons in society has been further strengthened. Around the world, inhabitants of cities, towns and villages are being held hostage to the spiraling violence in society resulting in large part from the presence of these weapons.

Your action offers hope to your own citizens and to the world that elected leaders are indeed capable of taking hard decisions in the public interest. We sincerely hope that your counterparts in other nations will take courage from your initiative and follow your lead.

Yours sincerely,

Konrad Raiser

General Secretary

Nuclear Weapons

Appeal to the Government of France

Letter to H.E. President Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic, 15 June 1995.

En annonçant l’intention de la République Française d’entamer une nouvelle série d’essais nucléaires à Mururoa, mettant ainsi fin brutalement au moratoire déclaré par la France il y a trois ans et salué de toutes les nations, vous avez provoqué l’étonnement et une profonde déception.

Les arguments scientifiques et militaires que vous avez avancés pour justifier cette décision sont loin d’être convaincants, comme l’ont montré les réactions qu’elle a suscitées à travers le monde. La logique de la dissuasion nucléaire que vous invoquez est d’un autre âge. Aujourd’hui, rares sont ceux qui admettront l’idée qua l’on peut garantir “la sûreté, la sécurité et la fiabilité” des armes nucléaires, ou l’idée que la reprise des essais loin des côtes de la France métropolitaine n’aura “strictement aucune conséquence écologique”. Pour le gouvernement d’une grande puissance mondiale, la défense de telles idées, aujourd’hui, défie la raison et contredit de manière flagrante les récents engagements pris concernant la prolongation indéterminée du traité sur la non prolifération des armes nucléaires.

Les églises membres du Conseil Œcuménique des églises ont à maintes reprises dénoncé clairement la logique et la pratique de la dissuasion nucléaire. Elles ont à maintes reprises appelé à l’interdiction globale des essais nucléaires et à l’abandon total de toutes les recherches destinées à moderniser ou à améliorer les armements nucléaires. Elles ont condamné comme étant fondamentalement immorales l’idée cynique quo la dissuasion nucléaire peut garantir la sécurité nationale, ou l’idée qu’il puisse y avoir une quelconque justification à envisager l’utilisation, en dernier recours, des armes nucléaires pour défendre son territoire ou des intérêts liés à la sécurité nationale.

Nos églises membres, dans le Pacifique, dont les populations ont tant souffert des essais nucléaires et du stockage des déchets nucléaires dans leur région, ont toujours été les premières à alerter le monde face à ces dangers. Lors d’une récente réunion sur les préoccupations du Pacifique tenue ici à Genève, à la veille des élections présidentielles françaises, des représentants de ces églises ont exprimé leur sincère espoir de voir le moratoire maintenu par le nouveau gouvernement.

Devant votre décision, et prenant le contre-pied du ton étroitement nationaliste de votre déclaration, le président de l’une de ces églises, l’Eglise évangélique de Polynésie française, a fait une déclaration en ces termes : “Nous condamnons les essais nucléaires et demandons que cessent les expériences de Mururoa. Il faut arrêter la course à l’armement nucléaire dans le monde. A la veille du cinquantenaire du bombardement atomique d’Hiroshima, l’Eglise évangélique réaffirme et confesse que son Seigneur est source de vie. Elle ne peut accepter notre participation et notre collaboration dans la construction d’armes de destruction. Nous ne demandons pas que les essais se fassent en Bretagne plutôt qu’à Mururoa, c’est l’arme de mort que nous condamnons ainsi que le risque écologique qu’il entraîne.”

Vous avez qualifié votre décision d’“irrévocable”. Nous vous demandons cependant instamment de l’annuler sans tarder.

Ce n’est pas dans sa force de dissuasion nucléaire que la France trouvera sa grandeur. C’est bien plutôt en renouant avec les valeurs humaines universelles sur lesquelles est bâtie la France moderne, et en assurant une direction morale et empreinte de sagesse dans un monde désespérément en quête de paix que vous-même et votre peuple pourrez recouvrer le respect de soi et une place de premier plan, digne et honorable, parmi les nations.

Je vous prie d’agréer, Monsieur le Président, l’expression de ma respectueuse considération.

Konrad Raiser

Secrétaire général
[Translation]

Mr. President:

Your announcement of the intention of the French Republic to begin a new series of nuclear weapons tests in Mururoa, putting an abrupt end to the universally acclaimed moratorium declared by France three years ago, was both astonishing and deeply disappointing.

The scientific and military arguments which you have put forward to justify this decision are far from convincing, as the worldwide reaction against this decision has shown. The logic of nuclear deterrence you have applied belongs to another age. Few today will accept the notion that any nuclear weapon can ever be “safe, secure and viable,” or that a renewal of testing far from the shores of Metropolitan France will have “absolutely no ecological consequence.” For the government of a major world power to advance such ideas today defies reason and flies in the face of the recent commitments made in extending indefinitely the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime.

The churches joined in the World Council of Churches have repeatedly and clearly denounced the logic and practice of nuclear deterrence. They have repeatedly called for a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing and for a total abandonment of all research related to the modernization or improvement of nuclear weapons. They have condemned as fundamentally immoral the cynical idea that nuclear deterrence can ever guarantee national security, or that there is any justification for contemplating the eventual use of nuclear weapons in defence of one's own territory or national security interests.

Our member churches in the Pacific, whose peoples have been so severely victimized by nuclear testing and disposal of nuclear materials in their region, have consistently taken the lead in alerting the world to the dangers. At a recent meeting on Pacific concerns here in Geneva on the eve of the presidential elections in France, representatives of those churches expressed their sincere hope that the moratorium would be continued by the new government.

In response to your decision, and in sharp contrast to the narrow nationalist tone of your announcement, the President of one of these, the Evangelical Church of French Polynesia, said in his statement reacting to such a policy: “We condemn the nuclear tests and demand that research based on Mururoa cease. The nuclear arms race must be stopped everywhere in the world. On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the Evangelical Church reaffirms and confesses that its Lord is the source of life. It cannot accept participation and collaboration in the construction of arms of destruction. We do not demand that the tests be carried out in Bretagne rather than on Mururoa, it is the weapon of death we condemn, and the ecological risk it implies.”

You have called your decision “irrevocable.” We nonetheless appeal insistently that you reverse it immediately.

It is not in its nuclear deterrent that France will find its greatness. Rather it is a return to the universal human values upon which modern France is built, and the assumption of a position of wise moral leadership in a world in desperate need of peace which will bring you and your people self-respect and a place of dignified and honorable leadership among the nations.

Respectfully yours,

Konrad Raiser

General Secretary