Citation
GENEVA, April 22 (Reuter) - Almost the entire 800-member staff of the
U.N.'s refugee agency held a rally in Geneva on Friday to condemn what
they called political indifference toward the killing of civilians and
aid workers in world flashpoints.
As the rally it got under way in the Swiss city, the U.N. building in
the Bosnian Serb-beseiged town of Gorazde in eastern Bosnia was hit by
two tank rounds.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the agency whose staff
organised the rally, has four international employees and three local
members in Gorazde but none of them was reported injured.
Sadako Ogata of Japan, the U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees, hoped
the rally would provoke worldwide anger.
The UNHCR is the main relief organisation in former Yugoslavia and it
has recently been burdened with the huge task of feeding tens of
thousands of Rwandan and Burundi refugees fleeing ethnic massacres in
their homelands.
A UNHCR spokesman told Reuters that virtually all of the agency's
Geneva staff took part in the rally.
Adey Makonnen, of the UNHCR staff council, read a message to 1,200
people who marched from the agency's lakeside building to the nearby
U.N. European headquarters, Palais des Nations.
We've had enough of the horrendous killings that we witness every
day,
she said. We've had enough of seeing or hearing about women and
babies being cut in pieces with machetes. Of civilians trapped like
rats in cellars, and being shot, shelled, rocketed and bombed.
We have gathered here today to express our anger and frustration and
to send a message to the political leaders to stop the killing and stop
the indifference, she added.
The crowd observed five minutes silence in honour of the victims in
Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia, Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and other
countries.
A UNHCR field officer was killed earlier this week in the Somalia
conflict, the agency's casualty.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
