Churches and Sufis in Defence of Human Rights

From the Latin American Press

Iglesias en defensa de los Derechos Humanos

By Octavio Velez Ascencio
Noticias: Voz y Imagan de Oaxaca

Friday, 9^th February, 2007

The Mennonite, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Catholic churches have initiated a campaign to collect funds to pay for the legal defence of political prisoners of conscience detained by the Federal Preventative Police (PFP). Maria de Lourdes Villagomez Diaz, director of the Center of Ecumenical Studies, says that the collection is in response to the urgent situation in the organization and the need to generate support for the work of several human rights organizations, national and international, on behalf of those imprisoned in maximum security units and state prisons. To this end the churches have joined with the Cuáqueros community in Mexico and the Sufi-Islam congregation of Mexico who themselves proposed the strengthening of such actions with expressions of solidarity such as the collection of funds.