VARIOUS: South African Nobel peace prize laureate Desmond Tutu calls for better media reporting of religion and says Mugabe needs face-saving options

Record ID: 456020

  • Title: VARIOUS: South African Nobel peace prize laureate Desmond Tutu calls for better media reporting of religion and says Mugabe needs face-saving options
  • Date: 29th June 2007
  • Summary: PEOPLE IN CHURCH
  • Embargoed: 14th July 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Religion
  • Reuters ID: LVA1EGBNDG49FNIEWHWVI5IULM55
  • Story Text: South African Nobel peace prize laureate Desmond Tutu called on the media on Wednesday (June 27) to be more careful in their choice of words when reporting on religious conflict.
    Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, said that broad understanding of trouble spots was often complicated by the language used to describe the activities of people or religions involved in them.
    He was speaking at a Reuters Newsmaker event in London to mark the launch of the Tutu Foundation UK, an organisation intended to bring the experience of truth and reconciliation in South Africa to inner city communities in Britain.
    Addressing journalists in the audience, Tutu called for tolerance and understanding of religions.
    "I would hope that you in the media would be passionate about letting people judge for themselves, that you would be careful about some of the language that you do actually use," he said.
    "'Muslim terrorism' - have you ever read anywhere 'Christian terrorism'? - as if Islam propagates violence, but you have never spoken about what happened in Northern Ireland as Christian terrorism," he said.
    "Fundamentally there is no faith that I know that propagates violence, that says it's a good thing to oppress anybody."
    Tutu said he recognised the media could be a force for good but that it had responsibilities.
    Tutu also said the war on terror could not be won until conditions improved for people around the world.
    "If there is one thing I can say categorically you are not going to win any war against terror as long as there are conditions in the world that make people desperate. And so you apply that all around and you say it's in our best interest to ensure that the other prospers."
    Later at an interview with Reuters, Tutu said that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe needed face-saving options for there to be a chance of him stepping aside.
    Tutu said the replacement of Tony Blair by Gordon Brown as prime minister of Britain, Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler, could help the situation but much depended on negotiations to resolve the crisis being mediated by South Africa.
    "A change of cast might have an important bearing on how things develop," Tutu told Reuters in an interview.
    "I would hope that there might just be a way of providing face savers that would enable people to exit without feeling that they had lost a great deal of personal stature and we need to provide that for the sake of the people," he said.
    Relations between Britain and Zimbabwe have reached a low. Mugabe, 83 and in power since independence in 1980, has accused Britain of trying to overthrow him and he threatened on Wednesday to seize foreign companies.
    While Western nations have called for a tough African response to end the crisis, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has plotted its own diplomatic course, calling for more dialogue and an end to Western sanctions.
    "(South African) President Mbeki is the facilitator, the mediator, appointed by SADC and he's had some of them (Zimbabweans) come to Pretoria and they've had exchanges and we just hope. I have heard that the end of this month, there is a deadline that people have set for things to come to a head," he said.
    Tutu, 75, is the former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work against apartheid.
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