Divinity School Activists Protest Contra `Atrocities'

Protesting U.S. funding of Contras in Nicaragua, members of a peace organization yesterday erected 12 white crosses outside the Divinity School.

About 10 members of the Harvard Divinity School Peace Affinity Group raised the three-foot high crosses as a "personal expression of our grief" for the atrocities committed by the Contras in Nicaragua, said Sharon D. Welch, assistant professor of theology.

The protest was part of a 70-city demonstration, organized by the nationwide group Witness for Peace.

Intended to "raise the people's consciousness of the covert war that the U.S. is waging against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua," the "Crosses of Sorrow and Hope" bear the names of those killed in Nicaragua by the Contras, said Karen L. Wood, a student at the Divinity School.

Welch said the crosses will remain outside the Divinity school through spring to remind people "how many lives are being lost" in Nicaragua. "It's a reminder that we need to be involved," she said.

Standing in a circle, the peace activists yesterday read accounts of Nicaraguans murdered at the hands of the Contras, and sang a requiem in memory of villagers killed by Contras.

Hogan L. Yancey, a Divinity School resident fellow, said that he had been to Nicaragua three times and talked to families of murdered Nicaraguans. Yancey said they told him, "In Jesus' name go back and tell people what you've seen and heard."

The Harvard peace organization, with both student and faculty members, was formed last year after 50 people from the Divinity School signed the Pledge of Resistance, an oath of civil disobedience in the event of a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua.