The Vatican on Wednesday said it was suspending all financial aid to Amnesty International and called on all Catholics to stop supporting the human rights group, accusing it of promoting abortion.
"No more Catholic financing of Amnesty International after the organization's pro-abortion about-turn," a statement from the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace said.
The council's president, Cardinal Renato Martino, said the "suspension of all financing of Amnesty by Catholic organizations and by individuals" is the "inevitable consequence" of the group's recent decision to support access to abortion for women who had been raped or whose health was endangered by their pregnancy.
Amnesty Italy promptly said it did not receive any Vatican or Catholic Church funding anyway.
In a statement, Amnesty Italy said it had decided in April to involve itself in issues relating to abortion "to the extent that they are directly linked to its actions for the right to health and against violence against women."
As a result it will call for an end to the penalization of women who have abortions and the right of women who are victims "of sexual violence or incest" or run health risks to have abortions.
But it will not conduct any worldwide campaign in favor of abortion or its general legalization and "will not make any judgement on whether it is right or not."
"Thanks be to God, there is no internationally-recognized right to abortion," Martino said, before attacking "the pro-abortion pressure groups which continue their propaganda in the framework of what [the late pope] John Paul II called `the culture of death.'"
"It is extremely worrying that an organization as worthy as Amnesty International bends to the pressures of these groups," he said.
The Vatican statement reproduces statements by Martino on the US Internet site National Catholic Report.
The site also quotes Widney Brown, one of the heads of Amnesty International, who said that 68,000 women die each year from backstreet abortions.
Brown said that Amnesty's views on abortion were inspired by its international campaign to combat violence against women.
But, Martino said, "the Church teaches that the murder of a human being can never be justified."
"Abortion is murder and to justify it selectively, in the event of rape, that is to define an innocent child in the belly of its mother as an enemy, as `something one can destroy,'" he said.
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
RSS