Semir on peace-building held in Kokrajhar

From our Correspondent

KOKRAJHAR, March 25: The Inter Church Peace Mission (ICPM), formed in 1996 by the combined efforts of the Church leaders of Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran and CNI with the aim of building mutual trust and restoration of peace and harmony among the victims of the commul riots of 1996, called for a two-day semir on peace building at the Kokrajhar Town Baptist Church campus, Kadamtola in Kokrajhar on Monday and Tuesday. There were 79 participants.

The semir was mainly for the youths from the Bodo and Santal communities, to reflect on the violence that took place on December 23, 2014. The resource persons included Emeritus Bishop Nityanda Borgoary (Chairman, ICPM), Emeritus Arch Bishop Thomas Meramparampil (Founder of ICPM), AK Goldsmith (President, Guwahati Baptist Church, CBCNEI), Father Alex Mathew (Associate Director, DBI, Tezpur), Sukumar Sahu Momin (President, Assam Baptist Convention, CBCNEI) among others who spoke on the need of providing leadership characterized by love and peace in times of conflict.

 The interactive session provided ample opportunity for the participants to air out their experiences of conflict situations. It was a reminder of unknown elements which rather disrupted peace loving communities of the region – in this case they reminded themselves to remain alert and vigilant and to maintain peace and commul harmony during such times.

The leaders of ICPM called upon all peace-loving people to work for tion building and assured that ICPM would continue to strengthen itself in order to play a significant role in promoting commul harmony among the communities of Lower Assam in particular and in other parts of Assam in general. The semir ended with some proposals from the participants for future course of action, which ICPM hoped to carry out for the sake of peace.