Black massacre commemorated

Press, 23 March 1985, Page 9

Black massacre commemorated

More than 200 South African blacks had been killed in violent incidents in the last year, said the Dean of Christchurch, the Very Rev. Dr David Coles, yesterday. “The massacre goes on, the heresy of apartheid continues,” he told an ecumenical service in Christchurch Cathedral yesterday. The service was held in remembrance of the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa in 1960, when 69 people were killed and 180 wounded by police. Both Dean Coles and a Catholic priest, the Rev. John Curnow, referred to the killing of 17 blacks by South African police on Thursday. That incident made it clear that peaceful protests against apartheid would still be forcibly repressed, Father Curnow said.

“The brutal killings of Sharpeville, which shocked

the world, are repeated. Nothing has changed despite claims to the contrary,” he said.

Dean Coles said that the Government was right to allow the All Blacks to tour South Africa if the New Zealand Rugby Union decided they should. “But as a Christian I will not remain silent ...

while I see that possible tour as strengthening the morale of the pro-apartheid Government of South Africa.”

Sport could not be more important than the “life and death issue of basic human rights” for blacks. Apartheid had been condemned by the Anglican Church as “totally unchristian, evil and a heresy,” said Dean Coles. About 100 people attended the service, which included prayers, hymns, and a reading by Teresa Robb, a black South African woman now living in Christchurch.