Debt protesters arrested on Good Friday - religious group protest for cancelling developing world's debt - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter, April 16, 1999 by Jerry Filteau

At the end of a prayerful Good Friday procession through Washington, seven of more than 120 religious protesters against Third World debt were arrested for unlawful entry at the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund.

Surrounded by white wooden crosses placed at the IMF doorways, the seven sang and prayed there for nearly two hours April 2 before Washington police handcuffed them and took them away.

Most of the 75 homemade crosses listed the name of a heavily indebted poor country and its external debt in millions of dollars. "Niger--$31,407 m," said one. "Sudan--$16,972 m," said another.

Marie Dennis of the Maryknoll Justice and Peace Office in Washington, leader of those arrested, said police released them at 10 p.m., nearly five hours after their arrival at the Second District police station. They were to appear in court April 12 for arraignment on charges that could bring up to a year in prison.

She said the group took its prayer vigil to the point of arrests this year "to extend and intensify the prayer that we were doing.

"We commit ourselves to return again and again.... It is about life and death, about survival for people we know and love," she said.

Roberto Brauning, IMF assistant to the director of external relations, said April 5 that the fund did not intend to press charges. "We hope to continue to find common ground with people of faith to alleviate poverty and promote greater justice throughout the world, particularly on the issue of debt relief for the poorest countries," he said. Brauning said IMF staff has been engaged in a "fruitful dialogue" with the Religious Working Group on the World Bank and IMF, sponsor of the Economic Way of the Cross, and the concerns voiced by the group have had an impact on implementation of IMF policies.

The arrests were the first since the Religious Working Group started the Economic Way of the Cross in 1996. The event is a yearly Good Friday pilgrimage through Washington, from the Capitol to IMF headquarters with stops at 12 other sites of major economic influence to pray for victims of economic injustice.

Arrested along with Dennis were: Sr. Janet Gottschalk, a Medical Mission Sister who is a professor of nursing at Texas A&M International University in Laredo; Susan Starrs Thompson of the Columban Fathers Justice and Peace Office in Washington; John Mateyko of Lewes, Del., Mid-Atlantic regional coordinator of Witness for Peace; the Rev. Douglas B. Hunt, a United Church of Christ minister and a board member of the debt relief advocacy group Jubilee 2000 U.S.A.; the Rev. Philip Anderson, Washington representative of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service; and Scott Wright of the Ecumenical Program on Central American and the Caribbean, a former Catholic lay missioner in El Salvador.

For this year's Economic Way of the Cross, in addition to the large cross leading the procession, most participants carried the smaller crosses representing individual poor countries. Draped on each were paper chains symbolizing the chains of debt holding those countries in bondage.

Reaching the IMF at 3 p.m., they conducted the 14th station of the Way of the Cross. In past years, the group has then gone to a neighboring park or church for a 15th station, the Resurrection, and a period of reflection. This year they stayed at the IMF for that station.

The five participants who planned in advance to risk arrest--Dennis, Thompson, Mateyko, Gottschalk and Hunt--then lined up in front of the IMF entrance. The others processed by, handing their crosses to the five, who took turns bringing armfuls of crosses up to the three sets of large glass double doors that form the IMF's main entrance.

When all the crosses were in place, the five knelt in front of the doors, each holding several crosses. At 3:10 Anderson and Wright stepped in and joined the five. Shortly before their arrest the seven placed paper chains from the crosses on their wrists, symbolically linking their imminent handcuffing with the shackles of the debt of the poor.