Tutu backs works of 'admirable' group Afri

SOUTH AFRICAN Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has expressed his solidarity with the justice, peace and human rights group Afri on its 35th anniversary.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner said he and his wife Leah were proud to have been Afri’s international patrons for over 25 years, describing its work on making necessary global links as “admirable”.

In a message to the group, Archbishop Tutu recalled how he first came to know Afri when the organisation invited him to a conference in 1982. He was unable to attend as his passport had been confiscated by the South African apartheid government, he recalled.

“However, I took up that invitation two years later, in 1984, and visited Ireland at Afri’s invitation during the inspiring anti-apartheid strike by young workers in Dunnes Stores in Dublin. That strike was a unique and inspirational act of international solidarity by young people in Ireland, and I continue to thank them for their contribution to the struggle for freedom in South Africa.”

The group has continued, he added, “to be involved in education, awareness-raising and campaigning on a wide range of issues, from opposition to the dictatorships in Latin America throughout the 1980s to their support for communities affected by the activities of multinational corporations”.

Archbishop Tutu said he had been impressed by the way Afri backed the Ogoni community in the Niger Delta before, during and after the execution of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and how the group “linked this struggle to that of the people of Rossport in the west of Ireland, who are currently facing threats to their health, safety and environment by the multinational consortium which is seeking to extract gas in that region”.

Afri continued to work on challenging issues, such as “support for lifting the blockades of Gaza; highlighting the dangers posed by global warming, climate change and peak oil, and campaigning against the ongoing obscenity of the global arms trade, costing more than $1,000 billion annually while a billion people in our world suffer from hunger”.