아시아 11/11/25 Rights group marks busy first year - Archbishop vows organization which social minorities 'can count on with ease'..Francesca Shin, Gwangju

[성기화 요셉]

Rights group marks busy first year

Archbishop vows organization which social minorities 'can count on with ease'

Francesca Shin, Gwangju
Korea
November 25, 2011

Archbishop Kim delivers his homily at the celebration to mark the first anniversary of the Gwangju Human Rghts Peace Foundation.

The Gwangju Human Rights Peace Foundation, established last year to remember a people’s uprising and massacre in the Korean city over 30 years ago, celebrated its first anniversary yesterday.

The foundation has reached out to so many people in such a short space of time, Archbishop Hyginus Kim Hee-jung of Gwangju told around 400 people gathered at a special ceremony at Gwangju Catholic University.

He said the foundation has sought to repay all the acts of kindness from around the world during Gwangju’s tragic pro-democracy struggle against military dictatorship back in 1980.

“Gwangju was not alone” because many people overseas gave a helping hand to the struggle in many ways, said the archbishop, who is also the foundation’s director.

Since it was established, Gwangju Human Rights Peace Foundation has sought “to return the kindness” shown by others by trying to support “other Gwangjus” around the world battling against political oppression, he added.

He pledged the foundation would become a rights group that “social minorities without power or resource can count on with ease.”

According to Father Raphael Kim Jae-hak, the foundation’s executive director, the rights group over the past year has offered 100 million won (US$90,000) to Myanmar refugees and to Sri Lankans still recovering from their long civil war.

It has also helped provide volunteer doctors and teachers for Myanmar refugees in Thailand, he added.