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Church leaders warn about military build-up in South Asia
2002-188-6
8/8/2002
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[Episcopal News Service]
As India and Pakistan continue their military confrontation over the disputed region of Kashmir, church leaders in South Asia have issued a warning against the military build-up and criticized the money spent on arms in such an impoverished region.
'The colossal magnitude of human insecurity and deprivations make South Asia the most vulnerable space on the globe today,' the church leaders said in a statement issued at the end of their July meeting in Sri Lanka. The meeting was organized by the Christian Conference of Asia and the World Council of Churches.
'The situation here is alarming,' said Metropolitan Joseph Mar Irenaeus from India, one of the CCA presidents. 'Development activities are ignored in the name of national defense.' While those expenditures have increased, the region was facing 'growing economic problems, poverty and malnutrition,' he told the conference. He called the increase in military spending a 'criminal waste of precious resources.'
A two percent cut in India's defense spending would enable the government to provide safe drinking water for 226 million people, or to supply essential medicines without charge to all the 135 million people who cannot afford them now, according to M.A. Oommen, a prominent Indian economist.
The border tensions between India and Pakistan is threatening the whole region, according to several speakers, making it the only region in the world where a nuclear war was a real possibility. Some noted that even very poor countries like Bangladesh are being drawn into the military build-up.
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