African church row minister suspended over Evening News story

AN AFRICAN minister who accused fellow churchmen of bullying and intimidation has been suspended by university bosses after speaking to the Evening News.

Dr Daryl Balia was employed by Edinburgh University to organise the Edinburgh 2010 conference currently taking place at Pollock Halls to mark the centenary of the historic 1910 World Missionary Conference in the Capital.

But the News revealed earlier this week that he had been removed from his role several weeks ago and banned from attending the conference he has spent three years planning.

Dr Balia circulated two reports complaining about "repeated acts of harassment, intimidation and bullying by former missionaries working in connection with the project".

He also claimed the conference, being attended by more than 300 church leaders from around the world, seemed to be caught in a process where "people of colour were treated as second class".

Hours after the News contacted the university for comment, a letter was hand delivered to Dr Balia's home, formally suspending him and gagging him from further comment.

The letter warned him he faced potential disciplinary action for "gross misconduct" by issuing documents which could be seen as "defamatory and inflammatory" and bringing the university and the Church of Scotland into disrepute.

Dr Balia, a South African Methodist minister who previously headed an anti-corruption programme for Nelson Mandela's government, said the university's move would shock many people. He said: "The Church of Scotland is using the university to do its dirty work."

Dr Balia said he had issued the reports to make his situation clear and insisted they were not intended to be provocative.

"They told me in March that I was not responsible for the conference any more, but for two months they never put out a statement. I was getting inundated with messages because I was the international director and people wondered why I was so quiet," he said.

He said there were tensions at the heart of the conference over differing church attitudes on the big issues of sexuality and relations with other faiths.

"They asked me to sound out a homophobic bishop from Uganda to be a keynote speaker, but I never contacted him."

He also claimed the organising committee had been dominated by conservative church people who stressed "mission involving conversion" rather than the more liberal approach of dialogue between faiths.