{"id":3545,"date":"2021-01-15T20:02:22","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T20:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stthomasneilston.co.uk\/?p=3545"},"modified":"2021-01-15T20:02:22","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T20:02:22","slug":"aid-to-church-in-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/?p=3545","title":{"rendered":"Aid to Church in need"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Politicians must act now to stop a cycle of massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) \u2013 according to a bishop urgently seeking an end to the crisis.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In a message sent to Aid to the Church in Need following the killing of civilians in north-eastern DRC, Bishop Melchis\u00e9dech Sikuli Paluku of Butembo-Beni slammed the indifference of media and politicians in the country.<\/p>\n<p>During the last fortnight at least <strong>40 people have been brutally murdered in the Beni region by the rebel Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) \u2013 with reports that several victims were beheaded with machetes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Bishop Paluku said:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0\u201cIn the past year alone, about 1,000 people were killed.<\/em><em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis has been happening for the last 10 years. The situation has drastically deteriorated since 2014. One massacre follows the next.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The ADF, which was formed by the merger of several rebel militia forces in Uganda, has been ravaging the border areas between Uganda and the neighbouring DRC, which are particularly rich in resources, since the late 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>The region around Beni, North Kivu province is considered the epicentre of violence.<\/p>\n<p><strong>According to human rights organisations, eastern Congo is suffering from the longest-lasting humanitarian crisis in Africa.<\/strong><br \/>\nRead more\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/acnuk.us11.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=25a175338ce0562b9d08ed926&amp;id=e99b50a74a&amp;e=af9e36772b\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Politicians must act now to stop a cycle of massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) \u2013 according to a bishop urgently seeking an end to the crisis. In a message sent to Aid to the Church in Need following the killing of civilians in north-eastern DRC, Bishop Melchis\u00e9dech Sikuli Paluku of Butembo-Beni slammed &#8230; <span class=\"more\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/?p=3545\">[Read more&#8230;]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-ryan-black","post-3545","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p85OtW-Vb","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3546,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions\/3546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}