Saturday, September 18, 1999
Tutu: U.S. has global obligation
Delays called disheartening
BY ANDREA TORTORA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The United States should use its clout to protect the world's vulnerable people, according to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a world leader in fighting racial injustice.
The retired archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, said it is intolerable that the United States owes more than $1 billion to the United Nations.
“I have been very, very disheartened that while people work out the "Can we, should we,' God's children are dying,” Archbishop Tutu said during a visit to the University of Kentucky this week.
He was in Lexington Thursday to commemorate UK's 50-year integration. He talked about his hopes for world peace and discussed what other countries could learn from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which let residents tell their stories of apartheid.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance,” Archbishop Tutu said. “It isn't that once you have won a victory you can sit down and be complacent.”
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, appointed in 1995 by President Nelson Mandela, can't be seen as a “magic wand,” he said.
“It came with its own controversy, yet it does appear to be a more viable way of dealing with conflicts of the past.”
The amnesty committee's final report is due in November.
Archbishop Tutu said he thinks the commission went a long way toward mending the country's racial fault lines, even though the group did not get the enthusiastic participation of whites — and other groups — that he hoped for.
Archbishop Tutu cautioned that no one effort can solve the world's race problems. The 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner said he hopes the world's people and their leaders will recognize their need for each other.
“In East Timor, Kosovo, Burundi, Rwanda, whatever,” he said. “What does it actually mean when we can spend billions on armaments and not think about it when we know a fraction of that would make a tremendous difference in the lives of people around the world?”
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