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InThe Record this week brings you
Record
the second issue of Intercom, the special four page lift-out section on education...
Father Brian due to return home about July 21 Perth will have to wait for a couple of weeks before it can greet the Australian Western missionary who has attracted world attention. Father Gore plans to rest up in Singapore before returning to WA around July 21.
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Father Gore was home on leave just two years ago. He had an inkling trouble would await him on his return. Just days after reaching his mission a trumped-up military raid on his presbytery started the case which has only now been officially dropped by the of government because insufficient evidence. In my book if we want to talk about the spirit of Christ in the world today Father Gore is a shining and compelling model and we owe him a great deal. If he has achieved anything, he may have started a process which is the beginning of the end of the Marcos government. It is the courage of people like Brian Gore that will see a new government in the Philippines and I notice that this week there are moves by the To make the process look opposition to impeach respectable the charges that regime. were brought to the local Just over 22 months ago I saw a news clipping that aPerth priest has been arrested I phoned and found Father Brian Gore stunned at being accused of possessing hand grenades and subversive literature in his house He said certain groups had been trying for a long time to get him because he was forming the basic Christian communities which would band together and he able to fight for justice. In subsequent weeks he described the appalling conditions of people working under the sugar barons and how the aid coming from overseas was not reaching the people for whom it was intended. It was important that the government keep him quiet and so began the most unbelievably unjust trial that the world has seen for a long time. His opponents resorted to torturing and killing people in order to get them to testify against the Columban priest. They found some way to lay on him the charge of having murdered Mayor Sola in an ambush.
court yet in 19 preliminary hearings not one shred of evidence was produced to substantiate the accusations. The government got into the mess deeper and deeper and the judiciary got caught in trap, perhaps the unwittingly. For these past 22 months I have phoned him once a week and for a tense five weeks I spoke to him every day just to assure him that he was safe and that if he needed the opportunity he
would have access to the overseas media. On one occasion they tried to have him transferred to a gaol on an outer island. 'If they do so, it will he the last you will see of me was the comment•. The transfer would have been the beginning of the end. He would have been liquidated. Fifteen months ago when he was charged over the assassination murder of the mayor; he went to gaol yet again, and after two months he was offered house arrest under military supervision. Realising its hopelessness
the government tried two approaches to win their case: they tried hard to make a deal with him to leave the country — and leave the six lay workers to their fate — and the military scoured the countryside to drum up prosecution witnesses who eventually were totally destroyed in court under defence questioning. That was when the people of Western Australia Senator Tate and the Australian Senate and the Irish government brought world attention to this travesty of justice and human rights.
The seven lay workers charged with Fathers Gore and O'Brien who have also been released. I am still critical of the way the Australian government approached this matter. It had the opportunity of protesting and acting after only six or seven of the preliminary hearings. In this instance that action should have been the imposition of sanctions.
Media campaign 'dishonest' ADELAIDE: A national media campaign being waged against Government aid to independent schools is dishonest, according to the Director of Catholic Education in SA. McDonald John Mr strongly criticised the campaign being waged by the Australian Teachers' Federation and the Australian Council of State School Organisations. "The innuendoes and misleading information that are being provided to the
Innuendos and misleading public are bringing the total education effort in this country into disrepute," Mr McDonald said. He was addressing the national conference of the National Council of Independent Schools, held in Adelaide last weekend. Mr McDonald said nonGovernment schools repres-
ent 24 per cent of all Australian schools. "Our schools will educate 760,000 students in 1984," Mr McDonald told the conference. "That is 25.3 per cent of the total school-going population. "It is also important to
consider the staff that nonGovernment schools employ. "In 1982 there were 39,295 teachers and 9,600 ancillary staff. "This year our schools will employ more than 40,000 teachers and over 10,000 ancillary staff." He added independent schools are a genuine alternative to the State system of education. • Coat page 2
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