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PAGE 12
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 21, 1984
Britain finds the situation particularly disturbing since Sir
John Thomson, its chief delegate, urged members in a debate on
Africa that others, besides the traditional donors, should look
for ways to assist. "We should not find solutions if we indulge
in the discredited device of blaming these problems
.2!!
imperial
ism, neo-colonials, transnational corporations and the like,"
said S1r John.
"Ideological flights of fantasv':"" he added,
should be avoided, while concrete ways should be found to help
those from dying all over Africa••.•
But the Soviet delegate, Mr. Vladimir Plechko was not impressed
with either Britain's contribution or any other. He commented:
"Many of those who have made enormous profits in Africa are now
trying to present their aid as an act of outstanding charity."
International food relief agencies are often hamstrung by the very govern
ments they seek to help. Ethiopia is again a case in point. The doctrin
aire Marxist central government, for example, exerts a lot of pressure on
aid organizations attempting to help drought victims living in the Red Sea
province of Eritrea, home of secessionist groups fighting Addis Ababa.
Some aid organizations themselves willingly submit to this pressure, being
rather leftist themselves. Here is a disturbing report written by David
Kline and published in the November 11 SAN DIEGO UNION, entitled "Famine:
Food Help Stalled by Political Walls":
If Americans were shocked to see the horrible skeleton face of
famine, they might also be shocked to learn that some of the
charitable agencies working to relieve this suffering are using
political rather than humanitarian criteria to deliver food
relief--in effect, to decide who will live and who will die.
A number of private relief agencies in the United States, includ
ing groups much in the news of late, like Catholic Relief
Services and World Vision, have chosen not to provide any assis
tance at all to approximately half of all the starving people in
Ethiopia. That half lives in Eritrea, a province now in rebel
lion against the pro-Soviet central government of Ethiopia and
therefore inaccessible to government aid channels. The Eritrean
insurgents have proposed a ceasefire as a "precondition for the
solution of famine," but government officials have not responded.
When first contacted about their inactivity in Eritrea, agency
spokespeople insisted this was due entirely to "logistical
problems"--lack of access to the Eritreans. But officials from
Lutheran World Relief of the U.S. and Dutch Inter-Church Aid--two
of the few groups active in Eritrean famine relief--report that
while the conflict makes it difficult to move aid into troubled
areas from government zones in Ethiopia, the Eritreans themselves
have a highly efficient infrastructure ready to distribute emer
gency food transshipped through the Sudan. The only thing lack
ing is the food.
Dan Connell of the Boston-based aid group Grassroots Interna
tional, one of the few agencies active in Eritrea relief work,
offers another explanation for the refusal to aid Eritrean famine
victims: "There's !lS! doubt in !!!Y mind that the Eritreans �