U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

68–683 CC WASHINGTON : 2000

STATE DEPARTMENT ANNUAL REPORT ON

INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FOR 2000

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON

INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 7, 2000

Serial No. 106–178

Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international—relations

(II)

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman

WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania

JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois

DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ELTON GALLEGLY, California

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina

DANA ROHRABACHER, California

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California

PETER T. KING, New York

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

MATT SALMON, Arizona

AMO HOUGHTON, New York

TOM CAMPBELL, California

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

KEVIN BRADY, Texas

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio

GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California

JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado

SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut

TOM LANTOS, California

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio

CYNTHIA A. MCKINNEY, Georgia

ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida

PAT DANNER, Missouri

EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama

BRAD SHERMAN, California

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey

JIM DAVIS, Florida

EARL POMEROY, North Dakota

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

BARBARA LEE, California

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York

JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania

RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of Staff

KATHLEEN BERTELSEN MOAZED, Democratic Chief of Staff

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman

WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina

PETER T. KING, New York

MATT SALMON, Arizona

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado

CYNTHIA A. MCKINNEY, Georgia

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama

BRAD SHERMAN, California

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

GROVER JOSEPH REES, Subcommittee Staff Director

JEFFREY A. PILCH, Democratic Professional Staff Member

DOUGLAS C. ANDERSON, Professional Staff Member

MARTA PINCHEIRA, Staff Associate

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

WITNESSES

The Honorable Robert A. Seiple, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom ...................................................................................................... 4

Firuz Kazemzadeh, Vice Chairman, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom ...................................................................................................... 7

Joseph Assad, Middle East Research Director, Freedom House ......................... 30

Acacia Shields, Uzbekistan Researcher, Human Rights Watch .......................... 33

Jimmy Zou, Falun Gong practitioner and former detainee in China .................. 36

Reverend Pha Her, Pastor, Lao Evangelical Church ............................................ 37

APPENDIX

Prepared statements:

The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress from

New Jersey and Chairman, Subcommittee on International Operations and

Human Rights ...................................................................................................... 48

The Honorable Joseph R. Pitts, a Representative in Congress from Pennsylvania ...................................................................................................................... 51

The Honorable Robert A. Seiple ............................................................................. 53

Firuz Kazemzadeh ................................................................................................... 58

Joseph Assad ............................................................................................................ 74

Acacia Shields .......................................................................................................... 80

Jimmy Zou ................................................................................................................ 86

Reverend Pha Her ................................................................................................... 87

(1)

STATE DEPARTMENT ANNUAL REPORT ON

INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FOR

2000

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL

OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS,

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:35 p.m. in room

2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. Smith

(Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.

Mr. SMITH. I would like to call the hearing to order. If you could

please take your seats.

Good afternoon. I am very pleased to convene this hearing on the

occasion of the second annual State Department Report on International Religious Freedom. I am particularly pleased that our witnesses include Robert Seiple, the Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom, and Firuz Kazemzadeh, the Vice Chairman of the

U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, as well as

four private citizens who have been victims of or witnesses to religious persecution in countries around the world.

The creation of the Commission and the office of the Special Ambassador-at-Large as well as the institution of the annual religious

freedom reports are among a number of measures provided by Congressman Frank Wolf’s landmark legislation on international religious freedom, which was marked up by our Subcommittee in 1997

and enacted by Congress in 1998. All of these measures represent

important steps toward helping millions of people around the world

who are persecuted simply because they are people of faith. But the

reports themselves clearly demonstrate that we need to do more.

This year’s annual report, like last year’s, does an admirable job

of stating most of the unpleasant facts about religious persecution

in countries around the world. Nevertheless I have two concerns

about the reports. First, they sometimes seem to deflect attention

from egregious government actions by surrounding them with exculpatory introductions or obfuscatory conclusions. Second, the best

statement in the world about religious persecution is unlikely to do

any good if it is not followed up by forceful or coherent policy for

ending such persecution.

In general, this year’s Annual Report on International Religious

Freedom is clear and honest about denials of religious freedom by

governments with which our own government enjoys friendly relaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:01 Jan 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 68683.TXT HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
2

tions, such as Saudi Arabia, France, Austria, and Belgium. But

somehow the statements become less clear in the reports on governments with whom we are trying to improve relations such as

Communist governments of North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam. For

instance, the report on Laos states that religious persecution was

‘‘largely due to the actions of a few party cadres in a few provinces,’’ whom the central government was ‘‘apparently unable to

control.’’ similarly the report on Vietnam discusses the Vietnamese

Government’s policy of recognizing certain ‘‘official religions’’ as

though it were evidence of a degree of religious tolerance, rather

than part of a systematic policy to force believers into phony government-controlled religious organizations in order to facilitate the

destruction of genuine religions that existed in Vietnam long before

the Communist government came to power.

A careful reading of these reports suggest there was a struggle

in the State Department between people who wanted to tell it like

it is and those who did not want to say anything that would set

back the relationship between the United States and whatever odious regime happens to be in power in the country to which they

were posted. Nevertheless, on balance the annual report is thorough, honest, and strong.

My deeper concern, however, is that this report—like the annual

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices—may not have any

practical effect on U.S. policy. This is particularly sad because the

International Religious Freedom Act provided an important mechanism for bringing about such effects. The law provides that on or

before September 1 of each year, the same day the annual report

is due, the President shall review the status of religious freedom

in each foreign country to determine which governments have engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom during the preceding 12 months. If the President makes that

finding of fact about a particular country, that its government has

either engaged in or tolerated violations that are particularly severe, he is bound to designate that country as a country of particular concern for religious freedom. He must then either impose

diplomatic, political or economic sanctions against the government

of that country or explain why he does not intend to do so.

Last year the President designated only five countries of concern,

along with two de facto authorities that are not recognized by the

United States as national governments. In choosing these seven regimes—Burma, China, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Serbia, and the

Taliban—the President made only the easy choices. Six of the

seven are already under severe sanctions for reasons other than religious persecution. The seventh, the Government of Communist

China, represented a tough choice for the Administration, but the

facts were so clear that it is difficult to imagine any other outcome.

At last year’s hearing, Ambassador Seiple, I urged you to take

a close look at several other countries whose governments clearly

engaged in religious persecution that is particularly severe, such as

Vietnam, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. Later, in July of this

year, the Commission on International Religious Freedom wrote to

the Department and urged that Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia,

and Turkmenistan be added to this year’s list. The Commission’s

3

letter also made clear that a strong case could be made for the inclusion of India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

Mr. Ambassador, in light of these recommendations and of the

clear evidence in this year’s report of particularly severe violations

in all of these countries, I am deeply disturbed by reports that the

Administration will not designate a single country of particular

concern this year beyond the seven that were designated last year.

I hope you can provide us with some insights into the Administration’s thinking on these designations.

Mr. Ambassador, as you know, totalitarian regimes often come

down harder on religious believers than on anyone else. This is because nothing threatens such regimes more than faith. As political

philosophers from Thomas Jefferson to Gandhi have made clear,

the strongest foundation for the absolute and indivisible nature of

human rights is the belief that these rights are not bestowed by

governments or international organizations, but by God. So our

government needs to understand that human rights policy, and

particularly our policy toward the denial of religious freedom, must

be a top priority in U.S. foreign policy, not a footnote and certainly

not an afterthought. We must recognize that good and evil really

do exist in the world, and we must act on the consequences of that

recognition.

I would like to yield to my good friend from Pennsylvania for any

comments.

[The prepared statement of Representative Smith appears in the

appendix.]

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will submit my entire testimony in writing for the record. I

would like to make a few comments.

First of all, thank you for holding today’s timely hearing on the

State Department’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom. Continued reporting on this issue is vital as thousands of people around the world suffer at the hands of their governments or

communities simply for the peaceful practice of their religious beliefs. In Saudi Arabia, in China, Indonesia, Sudan, Vietnam, Laos,

Burma, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Morocco, the Maldive Islands, Egypt, countries in Central Asia, even France, individuals

and groups experience harassment, sometimes physical harm, imprisonment and at times even death because of their beliefs.

Earlier this summer I travelled to Indonesia and Pakistan to

meet with people who experienced persecution for their faith, and

the stories that we hear are heartbreaking, and I comment on some

of those in my testimony.

Regarding the report, some of the assertions in this report are

controversial, such as whether or not there has been noteworthy

improvement regarding religious freedom in Sudan, Laos, Vietnam,

Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Government actions that initiate increased religious freedom are appreciated. However, governmental

statements or actions often are not translated into reality on the

ground. In Sudan, where a religious genocide is ongoing and reports continue to flood my office about the government bombing of

schools and churches in the south, the report does not convey an

ongoing sense of the genocide against the Christian animist population in the south. In Egypt the noteworthy improvements cited do

4

not appear to outweigh the tragic violence experienced against the

Copts experienced in a year covered by the report.

I want to commend the State Department officials who worked

to research and compile these reports. I look forward to continued

improvement on access to and reporting of religious liberty violations.

I would like to add a special thank you to Ambassador Robert

Seiple for his service to our Nation and to the individuals around

the world as he leaves his post next week. I certainly wish you all

the best in your life after government.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Representative Pitts appears in the

appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Pitts.

Mr. PITTS. I would like to introduce our first two very distinguished witnesses beginning with Ambassador Robert Seiple, who

has served as the first U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International

Religious Freedom since May 1999. Previously he served as principal advisor to the President and Special Representative to the

Secretary of State for International Religious Freedom. Before his

tenure in the executive branch, Ambassador Seiple was president

of World Vision, President of Eastern College and Eastern Baptist

Theological Seminary, and vice president for development at Brown

University.

We will next hear from Dr. Kazemzadeh—I am sorry, Doctor—

who is the Vice Chairman of the United States Committee on

International Religious Freedom. Until recently he also served as

secretary for external affairs of the National Spiritual Assembly of

the Baha’i in the United States. He is also a professor emeritus of

history at Yale University, where he taught Russian history for

more than 35 years.

Ambassador Seiple, you may begin.

Mr. SEIPLE. Thank you very much.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Ambassador, if you wouldn’t mind suspending,

although I didn’t hear the bells, there is a vote on the child enforcement amendment on the floor right now. So if you do not mind, we

will suspend for a few minutes and then reconvene the hearing. I

am sorry.

[Recess.]

Mr. SMITH. Let me apologize for that delay, and I would like to

resume the hearing now.

Ambassador Seiple, if you could begin.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT A. SEIPLE, AMBASSADOR-AT-LARGE

FOR INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Mr. SEIPLE. Thank you very much.

In the intervening screening time, I was able to find the button

that gives us a higher voice level.

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I want to thank

you for holding this hearing, and I am honored once again to appear before you.

As I prepare to depart the position of Ambassador-at-Large after

2 years of service, I want to say to you, Mr. Chairman, that the

Office of International Religious Freedom has not had a better

5

friend. You and your staff, in particular Mr. Rees and Mr. Anderson, have done so much to make our mission a success that I would

be remiss in not thanking all of you publicly. I do so not only on

behalf of the International Religious Freedom Office, but also on

behalf of those around the world for whom your efforts to promote

religious liberty have provided redress and hope.

Mr. Chairman, I have two goals this afternoon. The first is to formally present the second Annual Report on International Religious

Freedom and to inform you of the Secretary’s decision with respect

to the countries of particular concern under the International Religious Freedom Act. The second is to give you my sense of where

things stand with respect to religious freedom worldwide.

During the course of the past 12 months, my office has monitored

carefully the status of religious freedom worldwide. We have traveled to many of the countries in which religious liberty is at risk.

We have had access to the large and growing volume of press and

NGO reporting on religious freedom. Last, but perhaps most importantly, we have reviewed the excellent reporting from the U.S. missions abroad.

U.S. diplomatic reporting on religious freedom has always been

good, but it has become better under the tenure of Secretary

Albright, who made it a point of emphasis soon after her arrival

in the Department. Some people being the day reading the New

York Times and the Wall Street Journal. We would read reports

from some of the finest minds, patriots, folks who want to serve

their country, who are part of that Foreign Service occupying those

posts around the world.

This year’s report covers the period from July 1, 1999, through

June 30, 2000. It contains 194 country chapters, an introduction

and an executive summary. This year the executive summary highlights the improvements in religious freedom. We have provided an

improvements section because it is prescribed by the act, but also

because we think it is terrifically important that the United States

encourage improvements.

I am proud to present the second Annual Report, all 1,500 pages

of it, on International Religious Freedom.

Now, a word on designations under the act, something that you

had brought up.

Mr. Chairman, as you know, the IRF Act has established a very

high standard for this designation. In order to be designated, the

government of the country must have engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom. As we apply the

act’s criteria in deciding what action to take, we try to place them

in the context of diplomacy. Is diplomacy working? Are there trends

in one way or another? Is a particular action likely to help or

hinder our diplomatic efforts to improve the situation? None of

these is determinative, but all are important as we decide how to

proceed with any given country.

With respect to the Secretary’s decisions this year, let me first

note that she has decided to redesignate the five countries designated last year. They are Burma, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and China.

In addition, she is renewing her identification of Serbia and the

Taliban of Afghanistan as particularly severe violators. Neither

constitutes a country as envisioned by the act.

6

During the course of the year, my office reviewed the records of

all other countries which we believe might approach the designation standard. After carefully reviewing these records, and I would

say also taking the recommendation of the independent Commission as well, and looking at everything we had to work with, I have

concluded that no other countries reached that standard. I have reviewed this matter with the Secretary, and she has approved my

recommendations. Let me just add that they were my recommendations, that it was not a split between the Secretary of State or anyone else in the State Department in our office. These recommendations came from our office. And I would obviously be happy to answer any questions when we get to that part on any one of the

countries that we looked at.

Let me give you a brief assessment of my office’s work and a few

thoughts on the status of religious freedom. I believe that we are

implementing the terms of IRF Act of 1998 in an effective way,

faithful to the intent of the Congress, the President and the Secretary of State. The Office of International Religious Freedom is

well integrated into the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and

Labor, thanks in great part to my friend Assistant Secretary Harold Koh.

The process of producing the annual report has itself played a

major role in integrating our office and the issue into the mainstream of U.S. foreign policy. The report has become a focal point

for discussion of religious freedom and has dramatically increased

public awareness of our mission.

Our mandate has also caused us to reach out to American religious communities. I am very proud of our outreach program to the

Muslim community. I consider this program a success, and my office intends to expand it to other American religious communities.

My ex officio membership in the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has been a productive and pleasant

one. The Commission brings a separate set of eyes and a sharp

focus to our common task of promoting religious freedom.

With the support of Assistant Secretary Koh, my office has

grown to a staff of five officers other than myself, and we are in

the process of recruiting three more. Their workload is heavy and

growing, and it involves some of the most invigorating work in the

field of diplomacy. We are met almost daily with a new challenge,

a refugee family fleeing religious persecution and needing our help,

a new draft law that restricts minority religions, new arrests, deportations, or executions of religious people, and we have had some

small but important victories.

Our office has had the opportunity to improve the lives and fortunes of a few families and individuals suffering for their religious

beliefs. These are the things, Mr. Chairman, that give us hope and

make us even more determined to persevere in the promotion of religious freedom.

But in all candor, I must tell you have that we have made a very

modest beginning in attacking the root causes of religious persecution and discrimination. The problem has no simple solution. The

annual report provides a measure of the problem and shines a spotlight on it. On balance it is a critical tool in our goal of promoting

religious freedom, but to get at the root causes of persecution, we

7

must go beyond the spotlight, the designations and the sanctions.

We must convince governments that religious belief is not something to be feared, but a source of social and cultural strength. We

must build bridges between religions, attacking the sources of fear

and distrust that feed violence.

We must encourage believers of all stripes to summon the best

from their traditions. Every world religion, Mr. Chairman, has

some example of the Golden Rule. For example, the monotheistic

religions believe that every human being, religious or not, believer

or infidel, is created in the image of the Creator. To defile another

human being, to destroy a person’s dignity, to live without respect

for human life, these are attacks on the very nature of things and

the divine source of that life.

Every religious tradition is plagued by men and women who exploit and abuse the sacred, expropriating it as a divine license for

persecution and violence against others. In their hands religion becomes a mobilizing vehicle for nationalist and ethnic passions. We

have seen this outrage played out on stages from Afghanistan to

Serbia to Sudan. We must not view the actions of such imposters

and hypocrites as representative of any true religion. Religion can

be, ought to be, a source of reconciliation and hope, of unity and

respect.

The authors of our Constitution knew that religious freedom

touches upon the most fundamental and universal attributes of humanity, the quest for the ultimate gain and purpose that is shared

by every human being. In this, we are truly one human family.

So, Mr. Chairman, I am proud to have been the first Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. I am satisfied

that our office has done its job well, not only complying with the

law, but in laying the groundwork for future progress as well.

When all is said and done, our work will be judged not by the denunciations we make or the sanctions we impose, but by the people

we help. As far as I am concerned, that endeavor lies at the heart

of what it means to believe.

Thank you for having me here today. And obviously, I will be

happy to take any and all questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Seiple appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador. I look forward to hearing your responses to the questions.

We will be joined momentarily by a few other Members, including the Ranking Member, Cynthia McKinney.

I would like to invite Dr. Kazemzadeh, if you would, present your

testimony.

STATEMENT OF FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH, VICE CHAIRMAN, U.S.

COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Mr. KAZEMZADEH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My name is Firuz Kazemzadeh. I am honored to serve as Vice

Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. I wish to thank the Subcommittee for inviting a representative of the Commission to testify before you today on the Annual

Report on International Religious Freedom. I ask that my complete

written statement be made part of the hearing record. I also beg

8

your permission to leave early after the termination of this panel

so I can catch a plane home to California.

Mr. SMITH. Without objection.

Mr. KAZEMZADEH. Thank you.

The Annual International Religious Freedom Report is important

to keep religious freedom high on the foreign policy agenda and an

important tool to promote religious freedom abroad. It is the

yardstick with which to measure our progress in meeting the goals

of the statute.

I would like to take a moment now to speak about Ambassador

Seiple. The Commission commends the work that Ambassador

Seiple and his staff have put not only into the annual religious

freedom report, but also their substantial efforts throughout the

year to keep religious freedom on the foreign policy agenda. Ambassador Seiple has also made a significant contribution to the work

of the Commission on which he has sat as an ex officio nonworking

member, and we value him very much as our colleague.

The Commission will strongly urge the next President to move

quickly to fill the vacancy with a person as knowledgeable and as

distinguished as Ambassador Seiple. It will also urge the new Congress to impress upon the new President the importance of doing

so. As the Commission noted in its own first annual report released

in May, as important as the report itself is the impact that its

preparation has had on the State Department and on our embassies. This year’s report generally shows more complete understanding of religious freedom issues and extensive fact-finding and

verification. It reflects hard work on the ground.

In other respects as well this year’s report is an improvement

over last year’s. And I note with pleasure that some of the recommendations the Commission made in its annual report appear

to have been adopted by the Department. Each country report now

has an introduction, generally identifying the most significant religious freedom problems in that country. There are separate subsections that detail relevant law. Our review of the Department’s

instruction table sent to the embassies earlier this year also shows

that the Department incorporated many of the Commission’s suggestions in what information is solicited from embassy officials.

For example, the report focuses in its dozen or so pages relating

to Sudan mainly on the policies and practices of the Sudanese Government with respect to religious freedom per se, giving only a

page to atrocities being committed as part of the civil war, including, for example, aerial bombing of hospitals and schools, abduction

of women and children, and the burning and looting of villages.

There are, moreover, significant gaps. The report fails to describe

the pivotal role that oil extraction is having, especially in enhancing the ability of the Government of Sudan to continue in its criminal behavior. Similarly it does not focus on the delivery of humanitarian aid; for instance, the long-standing refusal of the Sudanese

Government to allow humanitarian aid to reach some regions.

Another notable problem is that this year’s report includes a section in the executive summary entitled ‘‘Improvements in International Religious Freedom,’’ which are also reported in the individual country chapters. The Commission believes that the reporting of such ‘‘improvements’’ must be carefully handled in order to

9

avoid misrepresentations of the conditions of religious freedom. Labeling what are really positive developments, and such positive developments deserve to be noted, as ‘‘improvements’’ confounds positive steps with real and fundamental progress in eliminating religious persecution. The mention of such positive steps in the executive summary can overshadow an overall negative situation. The

executive summary should be the place to report on fundamental

lasting changes in the protection of religious freedom, as may be

the case in Azerbaijan, but not particular events that may be positive. Severe persecutors can make a positive gesture without improving the overall conditions of religious freedom. On occasion

they do it to deflect criticism and to misguide foreign observers.

In the case of Sudan, for instance, the positive developments

highlighted in the executive summary are changes of a shallow nature, and not the type of developments that would signal a change

in the regime under which religious believers suffer horribly.

Another example is Laos, where the release of religious prisoners, in itself a welcome event, is characterized in the executive

summary as significant improvement. But the Laos section of the

report noted that, ‘‘the government’s already poor record for religious freedom deteriorated in some aspects.’’ these contradictory

messages are found in the report’s discussion of Vietnam as well.

The Commission is pleased that the State Department has listed

for a second year Burma, China, Iran, Iraq and Sudan as ‘‘countries of particular concern’’ [CPCs] as well as the Taliban regime

in Afghanistan and the Government of Serbia. This year’s annual

report affirms that the conditions in those countries have not

changed sufficiently so as to warrant a change in designation. The

Commission is disappointed, however, that the Secretary of State

has not named Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan

as CPCs. On July 28, the Commission wrote to the Secretary concluding that the governments of each of these four countries have

engaged in particularly severe violations of religious freedom and

thus meet the statutory threshold for designation as CPCs. I have

attached this letter to my written statement for inclusion in the

hearing record. The Commission’s conclusion was based on the information that was available to us at that time. The information

contained in the 2000 annual report only affirms that these countries should be designated as CPCs.

The label ‘‘country of particular concern’’ is important. It brings

into the spotlight the egregious violators. But the act of labeling is

only one aspect of the statute. The statute requires policy responses and, again, the International Religious Freedom Report is

a report on U.S. actions to promote religious freedom and not only

a report on facts and circumstances.

I would like to focus for a moment on actions taken in response

to the CPC designation, and then speak more broadly to U.S. policy

initiatives in certain countries.

Nowhere in the report did the State Department mention the

sanctions it may have imposed as a result of a country’s designation as a ‘‘country of particular concern.’’ This is consistent with

State’s previous practice. It has, to our knowledge, done nothing to

publicize the sanctions imposed under IRFA and at times appears

to go out of its way to avoid mentioning them. In the cases of

10

Sudan and China, the sanctions the State Department identified

are inadequate and ineffective. Regarding Sudan, the Department

stated last October that, ‘‘In order to satisfy the sanction requirements of IRFA, the Secretary of State also uses the voice and vote

of the United States to oppose any loan or other use of funds of

international financial institutions to or for Sudan pursuant to the

International Financial Institutions Act.’’ More effective actions

that the Commission has recommended include closing U.S. capital

markets to companies that participate in the Sudanese oil fields,

and taking steps to end Sudan’s ability to control foreign food aid

and use it as a weapon of war. Regarding China, the Department

stated that the Secretary of State restricts exports of crime control

and detection instruments and equipment. It is difficult to believe

that this sanction sends a strong message to Beijing on religious

freedom.

I would also note that under IRFA, the President must take action (or issue a waiver of the requirement to take such action) with

regard to all countries the government of which engages in or tolerates violations of religious freedom, and not only CPCs. These actions do not appear to be so recorded in the annual report.

In general, the report shows that U.S. Embassy personnel in a

number of countries have been working to raise the issue of religious freedom with their foreign counterparts. Embassy personnel

have also made inquiries and sought to monitor the legal proceedings of some religious detainees. Ambassador Seiple and his

staff have traveled widely to reinforce the message of the importance of religious freedom to the United States.

The Commission applauds these actions. However, progress in

the promotion of religious freedom also requires that steps be taken

at the highest levels of interaction between the United States and

foreign governments. Religious prisoners and persecution must be

prominently raised in virtually every meeting between American

diplomats and violator governments.

As a parenthetical point, I would like to note that in the executive summary of this year’s report, actions taken by the Commission itself are listed in the section on what the U.S. Government

has done with respect to a number of countries. This practice

should not be continued. The Commission is not empowered by

Congress to implement U.S. foreign policy, but to make policy recommendations. Congress has required the Commission to report on

its activities separately from the State Department. Including Commission actions in the annual report may blur the distinction between it and the State Department in the mind of the American

public, NGO’s, victim communities and foreign governments.

The report shows a number of countries where the deterioration

in the conditions of religious freedom have not resulted in an adjustment of U.S. policy. In the case of China the report bluntly

states, and rightly so, that the Chinese Government’s attitude toward religious freedom has deteriorated, and persecutions of several religious minorities has increased. The report reflects the situation in almost excruciating detail. Arrests of Falun Gong and

Zhong Gong practitioners and Christians worshipping in unregistered groups have accelerated dramatically. At least eight Uigher

Muslims from the Xinjiang Autonomous Region have been executed

11

in June and July on charges of splitting the country. The receptivity of the Chinese Government to the United States concerns

about religious freedom in China also appears to have deteriorated.

The Chinese Government has refused to reinstate official bilateral

dialogue on human rights and religious freedom. Government officials have refused to meet with U.S. Embassy officials who intended to raise religious freedom issues with them. The Department’s special coordinator for Tibet and a member of her staff were

denied visas for travel to Tibet. It is distressing that the Administration and the majority of the House of Representatives is willing

to overlook all of this in pursuing its campaign for permanent normal trade relations status with China.

Turkmenistan is another example of where the State Department concludes that conditions of religious freedom have worsened,

yet the reported U.S. actions do not appear to reflect any change

in U.S. policy. A promise by President Niyazov to the State Department to allow minority religious groups to register, thus legalizing

their activity, has yet to be realized.

A third example is France where the report describes in detail

some disturbing recent events that threaten the religious freedom

of minority religious groups. In particular the National Assembly

in June of this year passed the bill targeting the so-called sects for

dissolution and establishing a new crime of mental manipulation.

It is now pending in France’s Senate. However, a comparison of

this year’s report on what the United States has done, with the last

year’s report on what the United States did, shows that despite

worsening conditions, the United States appears to have done less.

The report also illustrates a number of instances why U.S. policy

does not appear to be in line with the gravity of religious freedom

problems in a particular country.

The report on the Sudan does not display any coherent or concentrated plan of the U.S. Government to deal with the situation.

We have not seen evidence of the sort of concentrated and coherent

policy that has any hope to succeed. Consequently in May of this

year as a key part of our recommendations on Sudan, we laid out

a specific 12-month plan of action for the President, urging particularly that he personally launch a vigorous campaign to inform the

world of Sudan’s war crimes. In addition, the Commission has

raised with the State Department and the National Security Advisor the issues of delivery of humanitarian aid in the face of continued interference by the Government of Sudan and of oil extracting

enhancing the ability of the Sudanese Government to prosecute the

war.

The Commission has asked Mr. Berger to investigate reports that

the Commission received from credible sources—Anglican and

Catholic bishops in the Sudan—that U.N.-provided humanitarian

aid for Sudan, including U.S. aid, is being manipulated to force religious conversions among the country’s displaced and needy religious minorities. I have attached a copy of the Commission’s August 14, 2000, letter to the National Security Advisor to my written

statement.

With regard to North Korea, the report notes that the United

States does not have diplomatic relations with this country. Nevertheless the United States does have a policy with respect to North

12

Korea, and one that has undergone significant change in the last

year, including the announcement of the lifting of certain sanctions

against the country. We are not taking a position on the wisdom

of those actions; however, it is apparent from the report that

human rights and religious freedom have not played a role in the

development of policy with respect to one of world’s worst religious

freedom violators.

The 2000 annual report states a sobering fact. Much of the world

population lives in countries in which the right to religious freedom

is restricted or prohibited. As the richest and most powerful nation

on Earth, the United States can do significantly more to vindicate

this right abroad. As the freest nation on Earth, it must do more.

On behalf of the U.S. Commission on International Religious

Freedom, I thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for the invitation to

present the Commission’s perspective.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kazemzadeh appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Dr. Kazemzadeh, thank you very much for your testimony.

I would like to you recognize my good friend, the Ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee, Ms. McKinney.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I do have a statement that I would like to submit for the record.

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Ms. MCKINNEY. I also have an observation that I would like to

put forward at this time and perhaps hear from the witnesses.

I am concerned as it appears to me, and I am not sure not to

me alone, that as we go about looking at other countries in the

world and basically pointing a finger on what they are doing right

and what they are doing wrong, mostly what they are doing wrong,

I note that Secretary Albright has called this grim reading, and we

do the same thing with our annual human rights report where we

basically tell friends and our foes alike that they need to do a better job in protecting human rights and in protecting religious freedoms in this particular point, but we rarely take a look at ourselves. And on the issue of human rights and on the issue of religious freedom, I do have one concern that I just wanted to put out

there.

It appears to me that we have here in this country passed a law

that has resulted in the imprisonment of eight people, and it appears to me to be solely because of their religion. I am talking

about the secret evidence law, and the appearance that here in this

country we have declared a war on Islam. And I know if it appears

to me to be that way, I am sure it appears to be that way around

the world. And while we point our finger at other people, I think

we better take a good close look at ourselves and the way we treat

our religious minorities here in the country, or else I fear that it

really could come back to haunt us.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I will relinquish my time, and I look

forward to the question-and-answer period.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Ms. McKinney.

Mr. Payne.

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

13

Let me say I applaud you for this very important annual hearing

of the international religious freedom committee. I would like to

also commend Ms. McKinney for her steadfastness as relates to

human rights around the world.

I will not make an opening statement, but will wait until the

questioning period, and at that time I will make a question or two.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Payne.

Let me begin with an observation.

Obviously passing this legislation was extremely difficult. Ambassador Seiple, you might recall the near Herculean efforts that

the Subcommittee had to go through in order to get the bill passed

over the various hurdles. I remember part of the objections were

actually coming from the Administration, the Secretary of State

and her Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck continually

told us, almost like a mantra, that this would establish a hierarchy

of human rights. On October 23, 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said, ‘‘Although well-intentioned, this bill’’ talking

about the religious freedom bill, ‘‘would create an artificial hierarchy among human rights with the right to be free from torture

and murder shoved along with others into second place.’’ All of us objected vigorously to that very bogus characterization

of what we were intending to do at the time. Just as when many

of us opposed apartheid, as I think everyone did, I also believed

that sanctions were a very useful remedy and I supported—despite

the fact that many in my party did not—a very strong sanctions

regime. That didn’t mean that racism was somehow being put

above other human rights. It just suggested that racism needs to

be spotlighted when it is so egregious, when it is systematic, and

when it is state-sponsored.

The same can be said for what we did on Jackson-Vanik when

we risked superpower confrontation in order to provide a relief, a

safety net, a lifeline, if you will, to Soviet Jews who were being repressed and the very few others who got out as a result of that

linkage between MFN and human rights or immigration issues

with regard to the former Soviet Union. There was no hierarchy of

human rights established. We emphasized one. Hopefully all the

others moved along. And I think it is just fair to note that there

was considerable opposition.

I say this because the facts will bear this out. On page 18 of the

executive summary, it is pointed out, Ambassador Seiple, that ‘‘the

Ambassador,’’ you, ‘‘has begun the task of integrating U.S. policy

on religious freedom into the mainstream of U.S. foreign policy and

at the same time into the structure of the Foreign Service and the

Department of State.’’ Hallelujah. That is exactly what we were

trying to do with the creation of your office, and all of the likeminded aspects of the bill. It was meant to say that religious freedom is important. It doesn’t trump any other freedom, but it ought

to be emphasized because it has not had its rightful place at the

table.

I want to thank you. Looking at your itinerary over the last year

or so, you have been a very activist Ambassador. We are very

grateful for the work you have done. We know that when you

march into a capital and you speak to various people, including

14

Presidents, Prime Ministers, and dictators, that you do speak from

the heart, you speak with authority, and we are grateful for that.

Having said that, just a few points with regard to the policy and

where we are now.

You mentioned a moment ago about the designations of the countries being within the context of diplomacy, and I would just like

to note that section 402(b)(1) of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 requires the President to designate each country,

the government of which has engaged in or tolerated what it terms

particularly severe violations of religious freedom. According to section 3 of the law, such violations include torture or other cruel

treatment, prolonged detention without charge, causing the disappearance of persons by abduction or other clandestine detention

or other flagrant denials of rights to life, liberty or the security of

persons.

When I look at the list, and again I am glad that we do have a

list, but again I think as the good doctor just mentioned a moment

ago, as the Commission did in its letter, there are other countries

that fit that designation. It seems to me that there was a

misreading of the law when it comes to the so-called ‘‘context of diplomacy.’’ That should be all about the response to, not the inclusion of, a country. Diplomacy should address the question ‘‘is it better to push or use this carrot or stick,’’ but not ‘‘how do you get

on the list in the first place.’’ So I note with regret and sadness that countries like Laos, North

Korea, and Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam for example, were not included. It seems to me that the record clearly should have placed

them there. And North Korea, where apparently there have actually been executions, should have been a no-brainer. Yes, we have

difficulty with access to the country in question, but certainly the

evidence and the reporting that has come out indicates presumptively they should have been put on the list.

So I would ask you if you would, to speak further to this issue

of ‘‘context of diplomacy.’’ And, Doctor, if you could speak to that

as well. It seems to me there is a misapplication of the statute

going on. I don’t think it is done with bad intentions. I think you

are very faithful to your principles, but it seems to me that should

be the response. What is the best way to deal with Saudi Arabia?

That is a different issue than going on the list, which should be a

matter of what the evidence is on the ground.

Otherwise, what is the purpose of the waiver, which was very,

very generous? That was a point that we worked very closely with

the Administration on to make sure the waiver was as wide as it

could possibly be, giving the President maximum flexibility when

it comes to prescribing a certain course of action.

Ambassador.

Mr. SEIPLE. This is a very interesting comment, and I think this

is a very interesting discussion to have. You were right in terms

of the parts that were read relative to the mandate under the legislation.

There is also something, however, that runs throughout the legislation, inherent in the legislation, if I can use the phrase of some

other people, a ‘‘do no harm clause’’ that we also need to take into

account. In other words, if we violate the spirit of the legislation

15

by performing a designation or creating a sanction in our diplomacy in any way, shape or form, we violate what the act was

meant to be.

So if our public presentation of a finding, for example, is going

to make it much more difficult for people in that host government

country to have freedom—I mean, it is easy for us here in the confines of the last remaining superpower to want to wield more stick

than carrot, but we serve an awful lot of people in our primary constituency who have nothing but sticks every day, and if we are

going to make it more difficult for them, do we not violate the spirit

of the act which essentially says do no harm?

Now, granted, once you take that as an assumption, you get into

some very subjective areas of interpretation, and, rightly or wrongly, let me give you a couple of examples of how we played this out.

There are some cases where we asked our sources whether we

could reveal what is going on, whether we can go to the next step

and do a designation and a sanction.

And because these are people that are on the ground that are

bearing the brunt today, we feel some obligation to listen to those

voices. We also look at what is applied on the diplomatic side. In

Turkmenistan, for example, we have a number of things that are

still in play. Are they going to reduce the number required for registration? Right now it is 500. Only Muslims and Russian Orthodox

qualify. Are they going to reduce it? We have had this discussion.

We have had the discussion of the repayment compensation to

the Adventist for the destruction of the church. We had a discussion on amnesty for people of conscience. We also saw in April

where this president came out with a decree that essentially said

we are not going to disrupt private worship. This was a huge boom

for the Jehovah’s Witnesses who were being harassed, for the Baha’is who were being harassed, for all the minority faiths there. So

there was some reason to look at what was in play and what we

were asking over a period of time to have done.

Now, again you have a subjective judgment to be made when

how much is enough time before you bring down the hammer. But,

another part of this legislation is the clear sense that we should

be in the business of promoting religious freedom. This is one of

the reasons we have that section on noteworthy achievements. My

goodness let’s have some integrity when somebody does something

right.

We have caveats before this section. We have said that this does

not mean that we can all walk away because they have done something right. In many cases, they are the worst offenders. Significant improvement sometimes comes from people who are the worst

offenders. But it lacks integrity if we always use the stick and say

you are doing this wrong and that wrong and we never give anybody credit for what they are doing right. It makes it much more

difficult to have the conversations that are going to take place over

a long period of time whether we fix this.

I think it is true, the Congressman and my good friend Firuz and

the Commission and the office that I represent, we all do want the

same thing. And by and large, we look at the same facts and come

to the same conclusions on this point of discernment as to what

happened. The real issue is what do you do with what happens?

16

And I would take the stand that we have taken and gone through

any specific country that you would like, but we did it with our

eyes open. And we did it for the constituency, the No. 1 constituency that we serve, those people who this day are suffering because

of how they believe, who they believe, where they believe. And we

have to stand with them. We stand with the persecuted. That is

what the act says. We stand with them in terms of promoting their

cause, and I think we have been faithful to that.

Mr. SMITH. Dr. Kazemzadeh.

Mr. KAZEMZADEH. On the same subject?

Mr. SMITH. Yes, please.

Mr. KAZEMZADEH. Well, as Mr. Seiple said, there are differences

in what ought to be done. We are in agreement on basic facts.

Evaluations will differ. If I may say parenthetically that the words

of Ms. McKinney touched me very much because the strength of

America’s influence abroad will ultimately be commensurate with

the situation at home. If we have achieved successes in other fields,

it is because of our domestic strength and the same will apply to

human rights and to freedom of religion. But some of the disagreements I think are legitimate. And it is not for the Commission, obviously, to resolve these. I was speaking on behalf of the Commission. This was the decision of that body. And in some instances it

does not coincide with the views of the State Department.

Mr. SMITH. Let me ask you, Dr. Kazemzadeh, whether or not you

agree with his analysis of this issue of the context of diplomacy in

deciding which countries are put on the list and which are kept off,

which was the main point of my question to Ambassador Seiple.

Having worked so diligently on that legislation with Grover Joseph

Rees and others, I thought it was very clear that the original designation does not have that kind of open endedness and flexibility.

That has to do with what we do afterward. We tell the truth, we

say exactly what the situation is on the ground, and then we decide

what is the best course of action to mitigate the abuse.

So that is basically the question I wanted to ask you. Whether

or not that has been adhered to, especially in light of the Commission’s request that several other countries be added to the list.

Mr. KAZEMZADEH. It is a very interesting point. Just before the

hearing started, Mr. Seiple and I were talking about this. The position of the Commission is the same as yours, Mr. Chairman, that

facts ought to be stated; and if the facts warrant the inclusion of

the country on the list of ‘‘countries of particular concern,’’ that

should be made very clear.

Now, what the U.S. Government shall do next, that I think the

diplomatic lens through which you look at it should apply. Obviously the interests of the United States are varied and cannot be

all decided ahead of time. The government, the Administration

should have a great deal of leeway to act one way or another. But

I think that on the question of designation, the Commission does

not share that particular point of view.

Mr. SEIPLE. Let me give you an example of where I think we

have a difference, and again we can go back and make a judgment

on how the methodology should proceed. The situation in Laos. I

was there twice in the last year. I don’t know if there is anybody

in this room who has gone to Laos twice in a year, but I went not

17

because it is great country, not because they have great weather,

because they were in danger if they continued what they were

doing, namely, forced renunciations of faith. People who would not

renounce, go to jail. If people go to jail in Laos, many times it is

in leg stocks. It is the worst kind of situation.

And to put the context of diplomacy over that, we could either

just sit back and watch Laos disintegrate and these people stay in

jail, and then come back and play our power game—namely we are

the powerful and yes we have 194 countries which do not include

our own but we somehow seem to be able to live with the fact that

we can judge everybody else—play the power game, make sure the

press are aware, and throw the book at them at the end of the

year.

I felt it was much more important, given the spirit of the bill,

of the act as I saw it, namely to promote and not to punish: To give

them a heads up, say look, we want to work with you. We want

to try to find a way out of this situation. We want to find a way

that creates sustainable solutions so we don’t have to revisit this.

Laos is a poor country. It has very little going for it. I mean, it is

almost picking on them to throw the book at them.

Can we fix it some other sustainable way that brings dignity

back to the human being. We have the discussions there, we had

a number of discussions with the Ambassador here. We had a number of demarchees throughout the course of the year. We finally

from the start of the year when 55 to 60 Christians in this case

were in jail, got that figure down to 25. In ways that, quite frankly,

I didn’t think were possible because there are problems even in a

communist country and maybe especially in a communist country

where they don’t control as much as they think they control.

So we had a couple of Hitlers out there, a couple of governors

who essentially were kings of their fiefdoms, and they weren’t listening to the central government. We got that changed. It was late

in the game. The Commission was not brought up to speed about

it because it happened after the reporting period. But it came to

the point where now in all of Laos we have a number of 25.

Now, let me just say that these things are not linear progressions. We take one step forward and sometimes two steps back.

Hopefully some days three steps forward. In this case we did an

extraordinary thing in the government getting them to work with

these recalcitrants, with these difficult Governors to points where

jails were open and people were let out. And people were not being

forced to renounce their faith.

Now the legislation is written so that if they go back and say,

‘‘Oh, we got a by, we can do it all over again,’’ we can throw the

book at them next week. We can throw the book at them next

month. We can throw the book at them next year. We don’t have

to wait until 1 September of every year. The bottom line—point

however is if we had designated them and then tried to work the

diplomatic side, the door would have been shut. The conversation

would have been over. When you designate and sanction a country

you change the relationship, sometimes, in my opinion, irreparably.

So if that was the original intent of the bill and somehow we are

in variance against the spirit of the act, this is a point we really

ought to come back and talk about some more. It is a very imporVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:01 Jan 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 68683.TXT HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
18

tant act. It is whether diplomacy will have a chance to work to the

betterment of the first constituency that we were called to serve as

opposed to a legal interpretation of an act.

Mr. SMITH. Because I would assume that within the context of

diplomacy is if the decision was made in a way similar to a Laos

we don’t think it is working all that well and the situation on the

ground as is pointed out the respect for religious freedom has deteriorated markedly during the last half of 1999 according to the report.

Let me ask you if you could update us on China. I was just reading some news articles a couple of days ago about the underground

Catholic Bishop Joseph Su from Hebei province who was arrested

as were several others. I know you raised his case. I actually met

with Bishop Su when he was briefly out and celebrated mass for

our small delegation and immediately got rearrested. If there is

anything you can do to shed light upon the situation in China, that

perhaps amplifies what is in the report since it has been released.

Also, what actions are contemplated vis-a-vis China.

Mr. SEIPLE. China is an extremely tough case. I think we could

have the same discussion we just had and insert China as to the

question ‘‘did it do any good?’’ Would we have had a better chance

without putting them in reports which now are mandated to come

out three times a year between the Commission and the two that

come out regarding democracy, human rights, and labor in the

State Department? It is a good example of designation and a sanction and it has been made clear here that the sanction doesn’t seem

to be much of anything.

Let me tell you that the designation was everything. We undressed China in public for what it is doing. Does that make it

easier for us to talk to China? Absolutely not. Was it the right

thing to do? I think so because diplomacy had failed. We had no

other avenues. They had taken away the ability to have a dialogue.

Let me say this about sanctions, I think it is right to have sanctions in the bill. We have gotten a lot of good positive things happening because we have used the threat of sanctions. But in China,

things were bad, and the integritous thing to do was to designate

them: and things have gotten worse in this past year.

I could give you examples from the Falun Gong situation. Let me

just give one that talks in my mind to the bankruptcy of the communist ideology. A 60-year-old woman, her daughter is called to

the prison to pick up her body. Her crime, she is a meditator, she

is a Falun Gong adherent. She is bleeding, dried blood from the

ears, from the eyes, and from the mouth. She has got every tooth

in her mouth broken. Her body is covered with bruises. We have

this from a fairly credible source: Last February she was made to

run up and down outside in the snow until she collapsed, a 60-

year-old woman. Now how do you stand by and allow that to happen.

I mean, at this point the context for diplomacy is gone. They

have to be lifted up for who they are and what they have done. And

they have to be lifted up in an international way. And we have

done that. I think that is the best use of this part that was so carefully and painstakingly put together through yourself and Frank

Wolf and Under Secretary Eizenstat, a very creative use of flexible

19

sanctions for the purpose of advancing the spirit of the act, thinking about 60-year-old women who nobody thinks about, who nobody

talks about, who can disappear from the face of the earth, except

we got a letter.

And I wish that was the only situation that was part of the

marked deterioration. A few weeks ago, they arrested 130 members

of the Fauncheng church, one of the groups that were targeted in

this anti-cult law. It is an underground church; there are three

American citizens involved. The citizens gratefully were let out. I

have to say this for China, they do a good job when there is an

American citizen involved. Give them credit for that.

That doesn’t take away from anything that we have said about

China. We have got a bankrupt system. It is failing. They are

scared to death. What they don’t understand, what they can’t control, what appears to have an outside influence, takes—puts the

fear of whatever into them. And they call it stability, but it really

is the paranoiac fear for control. And we need to worry about China

in the years ahead. Soft landings, hard landings, how PNTR works,

we have a bad situation there. So that is a little bit of an update

on China, but it also fits into this other discussion and how we utilize as intelligent beings the spirit of the act.

Let me just say, when we go out to these places and say in 1998,

when you folks were not very bipartisan in this town, you voted

unanimously for this particular act. The greatest thing to come out

of this act is that it raises hope, hope for these people living on the

cruel edges, hope for these people who are having to bury their 60-

year-old mothers, that the last remaining super power cares for

them and is willing to do things for them even if it costs them

money or prestige or whatever.

Hope is a future concept. In order to be credible in the future it

has to be tangible in the present. These people know that we have

a report that undressed China publicly. They know we have an

independent commission that works on behalf of the voices. They

know that people like yourself and Joseph Rees are working every

day to make sure that their lives approach human dignity and that

human dignity becomes a reality for more people in our lifetime.

It is an amazing amount of hope. The best thing that this act has

done is to make hope credible on the cruel edges of the world.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. Cynthia.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I would just also say

that lobbyists who were—you were here pounding the halls of Congress advocating permanent normal trade relations with China

didn’t care very much about that 60-year-old woman either. And

apparently no one else in the Administration did because they

delinked human rights and trade.

Let’s talk for just a moment about Sudan, Mr. Ambassador. I am

reading in Dr. Kazemzadeh’s testimony that on Sudan more effective actions that the Commission has recommended include closing

U.S. capital markets to companies that participate in the Sudanese

oil fields. Could you talk to me about the fact that is it that companies are raising money here in the United States for the oil exploration and that is going on in Sudan?

Mr. SEIPLE. I think you have correctly summarized what is happening. And I think as we looked in the Commission meetings in

20

Sudan, the most creative thing that I have seen in a long, long

time was this issue of barring. How do you do it, the issue of barring international companies who come to this country for the sole

reason of raising capital and will eventually go, sometimes directly

go to a process in a government and a country like Sudan. And believe me we have done about everything possible to Sudan including the throwing of Tomahawk missiles at Khartoum, but we

haven’t gotten their attention. And there are problems throughout

that country but the problem really, and there is no moral equivalency between what goes on in the north and what goes on in the

south, the problem is in the government of Khartoum. After 17

years and over 2 million people killed, the issue is how do you increase the gain or the pain of prosecuting that war. Because unless

you make it so painful for them to stop or so good for them to stop

it is going to continue for another 17 years. That got very, very

complicated when Sudan had access to resources because they are

pumping $32 a barrel oil. Some of which came about because

money was raised in the United States of America, people made investments.

Now, there are all kinds of issues here and frankly where this

needs to be sorted out is in the Treasury Department. But let me

say that I think it is a very creative idea. And it could have a tremendous boon to the human rights establishment if we could find

a way to deny this from governments or companies who are working in governments that are harmful to the dignity of people. I

think it should be pursued. I think it will be pursued. I am sure

there will be all kinds of legal hurdles. But I would suggest it to

you and this Committee to work with the Commission on that and

to work with the Department of State and Treasury on that because it is a most creative idea.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Dr. Kazemzadeh, you have suggested in your

testimony that there were some recommendations put forward with

respect to Sudan. How do you feel—what do you think the Administration ought to do with respect to your recommendations?

Mr. KAZEMZADEH. The Commission has made five specific recommendations. The first was that the United States should begin

a 12-month plan to pressure the Government of Sudan to improve

human rights. The recommendation says that if there is not a

measurable improvement in the religious freedom in the Sudan by

the end of the period, the United States should be prepared to provide non-lethal and humanitarian aid to appropriate opposition

groups. This was the first proposal.

The second proposal that the U.S. Government should earmark

more humanitarian aid for building public works such as roads and

bridges in southern Sudan which apparently lacks a proper infrastructure for the delivery of the aid and for the well-being of the

people.

The third proposal was that the United States should work toward a military no-fly zone over Sudan because, again, these bombings by air of hospitals and schools have been particularly horrible

examples of repression.

The fourth proposal, the U.S. Government should prohibit any

foreign corporation from seeking to obtain in capital in the U.S.

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ment because there is a kind of an irony there of United States citizens in effect contributing money for repression in another country.

And finally, that there should be an investigation of how far and

how much of the debt the China National Petroleum Company intends to retire, how much of the debt arose from its Sudanese activities and whether U.S. underwriters knew or should have known

of any such earmarking.

So these were the complete proposals of the Commission made on

the Sudan issue.

Ms. MCKINNEY. And Ambassador Seiple, what is the Administration’s position on those recommendations?

Mr. SEIPLE. Well, they are being discussed at the Department of

Treasury as I suggested. I am not quite sure where they will come

out. But again they are looking at legislation that is already in

place and whether we contradict any of that in the rights of people

in this country to invest and all those difficult issues. But again my

encouragement to everyone would be to continue to push that. It

is a most creative way to help the people that are suffering in

Sudan because of who they are, where they are. It is a very important, could be a very important tool. We could get an awful lot of

attention from despotic governments if they understand that this

great fountain of venture capital is not at their disposal until they

clean up their act. But it has to be pushed.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Chairman, I am finished.

Mr. SMITH. Sure. Mr. Payne.

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. Sort of in the

light of questioning that Ms. McKinney had in regard to the Sudan,

I too think that this is one of the worst tragedies that has been

going on for over 4 decades and have received very little attention.

About 7 or 8 years ago, I took my first of a number of trips to

Southern Sudan. The last one a year or so ago I went to Loka,

Tombe and other places. Just last night, I met with the delegation

late into the evening of people from the Norwegian Aid and we discussed the whole question of the problems with food aid. Now, we

asked our government that OLS was—certainly when they have an

opportunity simply to bring in food when they want to, they use

food as a weapon, that we have a language put in to allow food aid

to go through not OLS means. Unfortunately, even though the legislation was passed there, there was opposition from traditional

food aid organizations I think such as CARE and some of the others that opposed food aid and non-lethal assistance to NGO’s and

perhaps even SPLA in the south.

And we have a number of problems, as you know, the question

about the oil companies. That Talisman oil, as you know, we were

able to get that in New Jersey. With the assistance of Congressman

Smith, we pressured the Governor of New Jersey and they sold

Talisman. As you know, it is tied in with the People’s Republic of

China and Malaysia as an oil conglomerate. And the fact that there

is more oil in the south is going to simply increase Khartoum’s

reign of terror on the south.

Second, there has been an increase in bombing as we talked last

night. They are becoming more frequent. Just disrupting. When we

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22

ning and when the children run, you know the Antelopes are coming. And they continued the bombing and continued this continuously. And I too am at wit’s end to try to understand why the Administration has not put forth a stronger position against the

Khartoum Government. The gum Arabic question when we tried to

have sanctions against that was once again allowed to continue to

move forward.

So I agree with you wholeheartedly that food is used as a weapon

it is used too in religious persecutions. There is starvation still in

the Nuba mountains, the question of the lack of any other organization being able to bring in food into the south of Sudan really

makes this particular problem I think one of the most egregious

that we see in the world. Either of you have any idea of why this

continued problem continues to go along without outrage in the

world? Luckily we have more and more people getting involved, primarily students who are getting involved in the whole question

which has gotten some of the adults to have more concern. But can

either of you give us any light on why this continued crisis catastrophe continues to go out much attention on the part of the

worlds?

Mr. SEIPLE. I wish my old friend Firuz would have an answer

and an antidote and a silver bullet for what has gone on for 17

years. I think we are in agreement here that this is a conflict that

humbles us all. Why it continues. Why Khartoum would do this.

Why discussions that go on with our special envoy, which was an

additional plus to have that resource, that facilitator in the IGAD

process and so on, why he can be having conversations with his

interlocutors in Khartoum about unilateral or bilateral cessation of

activities and those same airplanes are rolling bombs out the back.

We had Max Gazeze here, Bishop Gazeze, about a week after they

bombed the school. And these are—these were first graders—14

first graders who were sitting under a tree having an English lesson. And the bombs hit and 14 of the children were killed. And the

diplomat out of Khartoum said it was an intentional target. This

is craziness.

In terms of what can be done, let me first address why there is

not more outrage. These are personal points of view: I think the

sense of intractability works against people getting involved, understanding the situation, which is complex, understanding Africa

and how things work with the neighborhood, which is complex. And

then also this has been a war without heroes. I certainly do not

want to create a moral equivalency between what has been allowed

to happen in the south and what goes on in the north, but it has

been hard to find an opposition leader to firmly get behind in all

respects. In terms of the OLS everybody has questioned why we

allow Khartoum to veto where the food goes. Again it is crazy.

The Government, the U.S. Government has been diverting more

and more of its food into non-OLS areas. We have to have people

to deliver the food on the ground. And the World Food Program

[WFP] is one of the few programs that is an international organization that can do that. Very few of them can. But right now our—

the money that we give to non-OLS food, if you take WFP out of

it, is about the same as we give for OLS food. So there has been

a switch and it is changing. Is it enough change to bring it to an

23

end? No. Again if it were easy, it wouldn’t have gone on for 17

years. It wouldn’t have killed 2 million people.

We wish there were more genuine outrage, that there were more

facts presented like we are doing today, that more people would

understand that what is at stake really in a global village has some

impact and import to how they live, who they are.

As I said at the beginning of this, this is a conflict that humbles

us. I think if we quadruple everything that we are doing we could

sill sit here and say, gee, how could we do more. We would welcome

the input from this Committee. We welcome the input from the

Commission. We have welcomed the creativity that has come about

largely through the Commission work, and we all want the same

thing. It is a tough, tough nut to crack.

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. We are going to continue to

pressure and continue to work with the Commission. There are—

we have some allies out here. This is something we have to make

a No. 1 priority. We have to continue to enlighten the world. We

are starting to see more and more interest on the People’s Republic

of China. They have got more and more people coming in, and

there is a rumor that they have a goal of getting several hundred

thousand people in Sudan and working the fields, and laborers are

there now and technicians. So this is really going into the wrong

directions.

Thank you very much.

Mr. SEIPLE. You mentioned the NGO, and I failed to comment on

that. I was head of an NGO that was very much involved. In fact,

we got kicked out of the north because we were told we weren’t

needed. We were out for 6 months and 250,000 people starved to

death, and we went back in the south illegally because human dignity is more important than the sovereignty of the state. I think

that is the position that most of the NGO’s that are there now

take. But it is very hard to ask a known governmental organization

to be part of the distributing system to the opposition forces regardless of how they individually feel, very hard to take the role

of one party in a conflict over another. It puts them in a very, very

awkward position. It might be the right thing to do. They might

ultimately do it. But we really strain the philosophical basis of who

they are when we take away their impartiality.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Payne.

Mr. Faleomavaega.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Chairman, as always I applaud and

commend your tremendous leadership as a true champion not only

of human rights but religious freedom. It always is an issue that

I really, really appreciate that you have taken the forefront on this,

trying to bring about the better change as far as religious freedom

is concerned, not only perhaps in our own country but throughout

the world. I certainly want to commend both Ambassador Seiple

and Mr. Kazemzadeh for very comprehensive reports that have

been submitted for the Committee Members to review.

Recently there was a 60 Minutes interview between Mike Wallace and the President of the People’s Republic of China. It was a

very interesting dialogue between President Zemin Jiang, I believe

is the pronunciation of his name. And there seems to be a quite a

difference of values between Western nations, if you will, as opVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:01 Jan 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 68683.TXT HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
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posed to those who are representing the Asian countries. And one

of the things that was raised as you had suggested earlier, Mr. Ambassador, about religious freedom and how the perception is by

someone representing 1.3 billion people, one out of every five persons living in this planet, he is the leader of the most populous nation of the world. The dialogue came down to the point, well, it is

very easy for Western countries to look at religious freedom but in

a very different way.

I wanted to ask Ambassador Seiple if there is an—and I am not

defending whatever action you have taken against the 60-year-old

lady that you had mentioned earlier, but I am only saying is there

a difference, definite difference of values on how we from the Western aspect of philosophy and whatever you want to call it, as opposed to how people have to cope with the realities, that form of

government, may it be communist or whatever other form that is

taken. And I say these not in a critical way. I am just trying to

understand, at least have a sense of understanding of the problems

that they are having to deal with, not just in religious freedom but

even just the mere existence, providing food on the table for some

1.3 billion human beings living on that part of the world.

For starters, I want to share with you I am not a historian, but

it is my understanding when the People’s Republic of China was

founded in 1949 there were 400 million Chinese living since 1949.

And our own country’s population right now is about 273 million.

We are now the third most populous nation in the world. But from

the perspective of someone like Mr. Zemin giving this, there is a

different perception about religious freedom as we would have it,

even though we have a problem with religious freedom. If there is

a question of high school students that could not give prayers before football games, the Supreme Court is involved in this.

I am very curious, Ambassador Seiple, if perhaps the President

of the People’s Republic of China gives that perception. There is a

difference of perception here. I wanted to ask you if there may be

some sense of truth in that observation.

Mr. SEIPLE. We certainly agree that they have 1.3 billion people.

And we should not ignore that. We should be very active in China.

We cannot take a closed-minded position to that. There has to be

engagement with China that has integrity. I wish that Harold Koh,

the head of—Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, could also answer this question. He is Asian, and he represents what we all

want to represent; namely, the universality of the concept of

human rights, the concept of religious freedom. I think one of the

very bright things, smart things, wise things that was done when

the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 came together, is

seen in the preamble. The preamble was written in the context of

the international covenants, the International Declaration of

Human Rights, and all of what came after 1948. Interestingly that

came into being a year before the Communist Party in China.

China always talk about its culture, its systems, its history. The

Communist Party is the carpetbagger in China. 50 years. That is

it. The Chinese culture of course goes back millenniums. But the

preamble suggests that these are covenants that are already in existence. America didn’t invent this idea. Jimmy Carter used to say

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25

vents us. On the basis of the dictates of the American people,

through a representative government, to put our considerable

shoulder to the wheel to covenants existing internationally that

countries like China had already signed—inherent in those covenants is the concept of mutual accountability. China could come

and point out our problems. We should welcome that. They should

hold us accountable for human rights abuses if they exist in this

country, and we should feel free to do the same. We don’t do this

because we have invented something special and unique in America, or that it is part of our history.

You know, there is something that transcends the nation’s states,

something that transcends national boundaries. It is human dignity. It is the sanctity of life which we have in common with every

single person on the planet.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. I suppose where I am coming from, Mr. Ambassador, I don’t question your statement in response, so we go

after China, we undress China. I guess my concern is that are we

doing the same for Saudi Arabia, where we talk about the rights

of religion freedom and religious freedom in that country. And of

course Saudi Arabia is a very important country as far as our foreign policy is concerned. It is not a non-democratic country. They

don’t elect the shahs and kings there. You are born into the royal

family.

How would you address—the concern I have, are we evenly distributing the pressure? If we are doing it for China, are we doing

the same for Saudi Arabia or other countries that are not necessarily democratic in substance as far as we are concerned?

Mr. SEIPLE. When we write the reports we write with the same

methodology, looking for facts that we can verify and then stating

those facts as they are. In terms of what you do with those facts

and the methodology employed and the next step forward, there is

a difference. I had a fascinating afternoon in Saudi Arabia talking

about these issues not only with their government officials but with

their clerics. In China, we are not allowed to have that dialogue.

That was suspended in China. So you do what you can do when

you can do it. If they gave us more leeway, we would take it.

Are we happy with where Saudi Arabia is today? Absolutely not.

And our record on that, our chapter on Saudi Arabia points that

out. Our chapter on China again, with the same kind of integrity

and methodology to fact finding and truth telling is done in a similar fashion.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. As much as we are doing a 365-day calendar

year that celebrates Christmas, do you think something—we

should also have a national day for Buddha and let’s say even for

Mohammed?

Mr. SEIPLE. I am not sure of the specifics because you are hitting

me cold, but should we respect the Buddhist faith, should we respect the faiths that are not traditional in this country that might

be new?

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. A national holiday the same way that we do

the same for Christmas.

Mr. SEIPLE. Do we have a national day for our Christmas because of our culture or because of our religion?

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Good question.

26

Mr. SEIPLE. I don’t want to step out and say we should have a

national day for something without more reflection on it. But if the

question is should we have respect, mutual respect, equal respect,

for other things, than what might be those that were traditionally

involved in the founding of this country, our majority faiths today,

absolutely. Absolutely. A country’s human rights record ultimately

is fashioned by how it treats the minority representation, not the

majority, and we have some work to do there. We are superficial

in our understanding of the Islamic faith.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Ambassador, I could not agree with you

more on that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Faleomavaega. Ambassador Seiple, let me ask you a few follow-up questions. In his testimony, Joseph Assad, the Middle East Research Director for the

Center for Religious Freedom, Freedom House, takes your shop to

task on the Egypt section. He points out in his testimony that the

Egypt section of the State Department’s religious freedom report is

very uneven. The serious findings of violations of religious freedom

against Egypt’s Copts of the last year are undercut by the report’s

determination that so-called ‘‘noteworthy improvements’’ have occurred and the finding of a trend toward improvement in the government’s respect for and protection of the right to religious freedom.

In fact, the improvements cited at the beginning of the Egypt section are either

misrepresented, such as the restriction on church repairs, or are insignificant in

contrast to the grave violations, arrests, and denials of justice experienced by the

Copts over the last year. Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom is concerned that the report may be soft pedaling the persecution of the Copts in deference to the Middle East peace process.

For example, the report describes the massacre of Christians in Al-Kosheh earlier

this year as clashes and exchanges between Muslims and Christians. Since all of

those who were murdered in the village were Copts, this description is comparable

to describing the Ku Klux Klan lynchings as clashes and exchanges between blacks

and whites. We hope that these shortcomings in the report’s Egypt section do not

stem from American insensitivity due to Cairo’s role in the Middle East peace process. The credibility of the report hinges on their ability to state accurately and unflinchingly the status of religious freedom irrespective of other U.S. strategic and

economic interests.

He then goes on to point out many of the concerns of the Coptic

church and individuals, including the vulnerable young Christian

women and girls who are targeted by extremist Muslim groups and

pressured to convert to Islam, sometimes with the cooperation of

local police. He has many other examples of the violence and discrimination against Christian Copts. How would you respond to

that characterization, which is very strong?

Mr. SEIPLE. Joseph Assad is a good friend of mine. I have a great

respect for his reflective thought and his methodology and his conclusions. I would take exception with a friend—that is the beauty

of dialogue with friends—that the improvement section is still important. We have touched about this earlier. I find that we lose

credibility as I mentioned before, when we only talk about those

things that are wrong and not those things where progress has

been made. I think we have to be larger than simply hitting people.

We have to find ways to lift them up to a higher standard. Sometimes the mere mention of something positive is that instrument

that can do that. And I hope that will be the case here.

27

I have never been accused of being a soft peddler in my life. I

don’t think we have soft peddled Egypt. I think you talk to the

Egyptian Government, and you get a chance to do that from time

to time. Whether or not they like the international religious freedom report and the characterizations, there is no question that this

year in the terrible events at the end of December, beginning of

January in Al-Kosheh, terrible from a human rights perspective,

terrible from anybody who believes in the dignity of people, but I

do have to say and Joseph has to say that the Egyptian Government handled this one sight better than they handled it the year

before.

Why did they do it? They did it because we talked to them. We

explained the problems. We explained the way they were going to

be perceived by the rest of the world. If they continued to do what

they did essentially after Al-Kosheh, I mainly to try to put something—shove it under the rug, forget about it, say it didn’t happen.

And in Al-Kosheh I, we can use that terminology, in August 1998

they did everything wrong. At least the government response to

these terrible abuses, these terrible occurrences this year, was a

great deal better than before and that is progress.

Again, I don’t think anyone can read the entire Egypt section

and feel that we have given them a buy because they are a longterm ally. We think we have told it like it is. We may have difference on how much of this is tied to societal hostilities, how much

of it is tied to the lack of human rights and how much it is specifically tied to a significant degree to religious freedom issues. But

that is why we have these kinds of conversations.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Ambassador, I say this with respect too, because

I do greatly respect you, I think it is important to raise these

issues, even though we now have another vote on the floor of the

House. But there is a very strong statement coming from the

Uzbekistan researcher who will also be testifying shortly, Ms.

Shields, who has worked on the ground in Tashkent. She is a researcher for Human Rights Watch. She makes the points—I would

like to quote that briefly and try to get your response with regard

to Uzbekistan.

While this year has seen at least two dramatic and disturbing attacks on Christian believers and several detentions of Christians for alleged missionary activity,

one of which was documented in the State Department report, the problem of religious repression in Uzbekistan is first and foremost a problem of government ordered discrimination in violence against pious Muslims on a vast scale.

Since late 1997, Uzbek police and security forces have arrested thousands of pious

Muslims. These arrests are illegal and discriminatory; they target people who belong to unregistered Islamic groups who practice outside state controlled mosques

or who possess Islamic literature not generated by the government. Police routinely

torture and threaten detainees, deny them access to medical treatment and legal

counsel and often hold them incommunicado in basement cells for up to 6 months.

Trials are grossly unfair as judges systematically punish independent Muslims with

lengthy terms in prison for their religious beliefs and affiliations, ignoring allegations of torture and allowing coerced self-incriminating statements of evidence, often

the only offered evidence, to convict.

This year’s IRF report recognizes neither the anti-religious nature of this repression nor the human rights crisis it has produced. It argues that victims are engaged

in activity that is primarily political and therefore that Uzbekistan cannot be said

to be violating the victim’s religious freedom.

This campaign of repression based on religious beliefs and practices is blatant and

irrefutable, and the arrest of thousands of independent Muslims is now well-documented.

28

Only sophistry has allowed the Administration to avoid classifying Uzbekistan as

a country of particular concern for its gross violations of religious freedom.

How do you respond to that? Again I have had hearings in the

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and you are

up on Uzbekistan and we have focused very much on the religious

repression. I, too, find it puzzling and perhaps there is an answer.

Mr. SEIPLE. I do think there is an answer. Again, I very much

respect the work of Acacia Shields. I know the size of her heart.

We spent time together with a number of Muslim women during

my last trip there. I have been there twice looking at these issues.

First of all, there are horrendous human rights problems in

Uzbekistan. I hope that nothing in the report minimizes the fact

that we have huge human rights issues. What we need to be sensitive to, however, is that human rights, other human rights do not

use the International Religious Freedom Act and hold it hostage

and try to make it work so that this can be used against the situation over there.

We have had—this past year we have had a number of people

released from prison. We have had a liberalization of the registration process. We have had a promise followed up on that there

would be roundtables and conferences on the 1998 religious law,

which we feel was the most harsh religious law in that part of the

world or any part of the world. All those things have happened.

Namely, diplomacy has had some major successes here.

Again is it linear? Do you ever go two steps forward, one step

back or three steps back? You bet. This is a country that has been

around for 10 years and it comes out of the Soviet system with

some of the same personalities in place. But basically the difference

is this: The Uzbeki Government sees the opposition parties as

wanting to come in and take over violently their government. And

I looked at the bombing of February 16, 1999 when their paranoia

on that issue became very real. They have a point. They live in

that neighborhood. There are forces that would like to turn that

country inside out and turn it into a form of political Islam or Islamic extremism.

Now, that does not mean that they should throw the net so wide

that they bring in innocent people, whatever the religion, and they

end up in jail, they end up in those torture chambers or prisons

that exist in Uzbekistan. Every conversation that we have had with

our interlocutors has said what you are doing by that, it is a massive human rights violation and you are radicalizing moderate people by bringing them into the net and keeping them in prison and

torturing them. Now, are they doing it because of their religion?

This is a Muslim country. 85 percent of the people in the country

are Muslim. Do people who are Muslim in the country worship

freely? By and large yes. It is a huge human rights issue. We do

not see that as a specific, to a significant degree, religious freedom

issue. Regarding the religious freedom issues, we have had nothing

but cooperation.

I hope some day one good cooperative effort will lead to a further

cooperative effort and we get what Acacia Shields wants as well;

that is, these jails be opened up, the general amnesty takes place,

and this massive human rights violation is ameliorated.

29

Mr. SMITH. I thank you for that response. I do have additional

questions. I am sure my good friend from Georgia does likewise.

We would like to submit them to you.

For instance, on Burma, where there has been obviously a very

bad turn for the worse, and although maybe that is political, there

seem to be some religious overtones to it. In Indonesia there seems

to be a rising tide of intolerance. On trips that I have taken there

I have raised that very issue. I know you have as well. It seems

as if there may be collusion if not outright backing of certain violence against Christians. There are serious problems in North

Korea, as I mentioned earlier, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam. I do

have a number of questions that I would like to pose to you.

So again time does not permit, but we will make them a part of

the record.

Mr. SEIPLE. We would love to keep the conversation going. You

know I am the talking head in the office. The person who does all

the heavy lifting, an incredible job and incredible person, is my

deputy Tom Farr. And gratefully our staffs are working, and talking heads come and go, but the good work will continue, and I am

at your disposal in the future.

Mr. SMITH. In all candor, I know Mr. Farr. I think the world of

him, but you are more than a talking head. You have done a great

job and we appreciate it. Even when there is a difference of opinion, I know it is coming from the heart and you know we just agree

to disagree on certain countries that perhaps are not included.

But I want to thank you for your great service. The Subcommittee, I know all of us in a bipartisan way, deeply respect you

and wish you well.

Mr. SEIPLE. Thank you very much.

Mr. SMITH. We do have a vote on the floor. The Subcommittee

will stand in recess until that vote is concluded and then we will

take on the second panel.

Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.

[Recess.]

Mr. SMITH. The Subcommittee will resume its sitting.

I would like to introduce the next panel, panel two, a very distinguished group of people, beginning with Joseph Assad, who is the

research director for Sudan and the Middle East at Freedom

House’s Center for Religious Freedom here in Washington. An

Egyptian Christian human rights activist who is fluent in Arabic,

Mr. Assad travelled to Egypt this past July to investigate the January 2000 massacre of Christians in Al-Kosheh. He represented

Freedom House at the United Nations Human Rights Commission

in Geneva and has led fact-finding missions in numerous countries

for the Center for Religious Freedom.

Next we have Acacia Shields, who is the Uzbekistan researcher

for Human Rights Watch and serves as the director of that organization’s field office in Tashkent. A previous employee of Amnesty

International. Ms. Shields joined Human Rights Watch in 1997 as

the Europe and Central Asia Division coordinator on Central Asia

and the Caucasus. Ms. Shields studied Islamic law and Middle

East politics at Brown University and earned her master’s degree

in international affairs and human rights from Columbia University.

30

Third we will hear from Dr. Jimmy Zou, who is a Falun Gong

practitioner. During a visit to China last year to visit his parents,

Dr. Zou was arrested and tortured by Chinese authorities during

his 6-day detention. Currently a Federal employee in Washington,

D.C., Dr. Zou earned his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Connecticut.

Finally, we will hear from Reverend Pha Her, who is the secretary of the Lao Evangelical Church, which is the headquarters of

the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination in Laos. Reverend Her traveled to the United State from Laos earlier this summer.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Assad, if you could begin.

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH ASSAD, MIDDLE EAST RESEARCH

DIRECTOR, FREEDOM HOUSE

Mr. ASSAD. On behalf of Freedom House’s Center for Religious

Freedom, I congratulate you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the

Committee, for holding these important hearings today. Mr. Chairman, Freedom House applauds your dedicated efforts for many

years for religious freedom in many countries around the world.

I am appearing here both as a representative of the Center for

Religious Freedom and as a Coptic Christian born and raised in

Egypt, who has witnessed firsthand the problems facing the Middle

East’s largest religious minority. I return to my native Egypt frequently. My last visit was in July in order to investigate the facts

surrounding the Al-Kosheh massacre of last January, which was

mentioned earlier in the first panel.

I have been asked to concentrate my remarks on the pivotal

country of Egypt and the Coptic perspective of religious persecution

in that country. The Egypt section of the State Department’s Religious Freedom Report is very uneven. The serious findings of violations of religious freedom against Egypt’s Coptic minority of last

year are undercut by the report’s determination that so-called ‘‘noteworthy improvements’’ have occurred and the finding of a ‘‘trend toward improvements in the government’s response for and

protection to the right of religious freedom.’’ In fact, the improvements cited at the beginning of the Egypt

section are either misrepresented, such as the restriction on church

repairs, or are insignificant in contrast to grave violations, arrests,

and denials of justice experienced by the Copts over the past year.

Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom is concerned that

the report may be soft-pedaling the persecution of Copts in deference to the Middle East peace process.

For example, despite last December’s announcement by Cairo to

the contrary, government officials still enforce restrictions to building and repairing churches, restrictions that do not apply to

mosques. Most Copts we talked to in Egypt this summer stressed

that in practice they still face the same barriers as before. None

of the religious leaders could point to an example of a church which

was able to conduct repairs without an official permit as required

under the old law. We talked to several pastors and priests whose

churches were denied permits for repairs even after the new

changes in the law were made. The priest of one church we visited

in upper Egypt was recently arrested after he installed a metal

31

grille to be used as a doormat without the government’s permission. Therefore, the report’s assertion that the new Presidential decree has had a positive effect in the facilitation of church repairs

appears to be unwarranted.

In addition to the long-standing problems faced by the Copts,

which are well known to this Committee, this past year Egypt has

witnessed several severe setbacks for religious freedom, setbacks

that are difficult to reconcile with the State Department’s annual

report’s findings of noteworthy improvements. The most egregious

of these occurred in the southern Egyptian village of Al-Kosheh in

one of the worst massacres of Coptic Christians in recent history.

The Egypt section of the report mischaracterizes what occurred in

Al-Kosheh as sectarian violence and as clashes and exchanges between Muslims and Christians. Since all of the murdered in the village were Coptic Christians, this description is comparable to describing the Ku Klux Klan lynchings as exchanges between blacks

and whites.

The report concludes that the government’s response is improved,

with the government responding quickly to restore order. These assertions contradict the accounts of eyewitnesses to the massacre,

Egyptian human rights observers and the Coptic Pope’s own assessment of the government’s response. As a matter of fact, in an

extraordinary written protest, Coptic leader Pope Shenouda

charged the Egyptian Government of not doing enough to stop violence and demanded answers for why the police withdrew from the

area minutes before the massacre began.

In July, as part of a Center for Religious Freedom team, I spent

3 weeks in Egypt documenting and investigating Al-Kosheh where

21 Christians were killed, dozens were injured after they were attacked by rampaging Muslims in early 2000. One Muslim was also

killed in a nearby village by a stray bullet fired by another Muslim.

While in Egypt our team interviewed families of victims, dozens

of eyewitnesses. They gave us firsthand descriptions of the attack.

Nine of the dead Copts were killed in their own houses, which indicates that they were hunted down as were sought to escape. Three

of the dead were females, one an 11-year-old girl, and four were

under the age of 16, and one was 85. One man was reportedly

asked to renounce his Christian faith. When he refused, his arm

bearing a Christian tattoo was cutoff, and he was stabbed to death.

A mob then burned his body. His mother was an eyewitness to

these events.

While there was destruction of property in Al-Kosheh by both

Muslims and Christians, all those murdered were Christians. The

massacre in January of 2000 cannot be understood apart from the

events in Al-Kosheh of 1998. The murder of two Copts in August

allegedly by five Muslims was followed by the arrest, abuse and

sometimes torture over the next 6 weeks of about 1,000 Copts by

local Egyptian police. The government continues to deny that discrimination occurred by police nor brutality in Al-Kosheh.

Coptic Bishop Wissa was also arrested for reporting publicly on

this incident. No police officer was penalized for the well-documented mass abuse and incidents of torture in Al-Kosheh of 1998.

There can be little doubt that the failure of justice for Christians

after the police dragnets and abuse of 1998 left the Coptic commuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:01 Jan 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 68683.TXT HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
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nity vulnerable to further assaults by sending a signal that the

Christian community could be attacked and driven from their

homes with impunity.

The Al-Kosheh massacre of 2000 is compounded by the government attempts to muzzle nongovernmental organizations and

human rights defenders who reported on it. Government pressure

has led to the closing of the Center for Legal Studies in Human

Rights, and the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies,

while the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights significantly

scaled back its activities. Sociologist and prodemocracy activist Dr.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim was arrested and detained earlier this summer. These NGO’s are essential institutions for furthering democratization and religious tolerance from within Egyptian society.

Mr. Chairman, this is why I stated that the State Department’s

report soft-pedals the Egypt section because this is major, and it

was not acknowledged in the report. Two days ago 21 Muslims

were convicted on relatively minor charges in connection with the

Al-Kosheh massacre. To date no one has been convicted or sentenced for murder or attempted murder in the massacre itself.

Until now the Government of Egypt has consistently downplayed

the extent and seriousness of violence against Egypt’s Christian

community. It has characterized the Al-Kosheh massacre of last

January as simply a random event that is unconnected with religion. It is too early to tell if the convictions announced 2 days ago

are the turning point.

We are concerned that if the Government of Egypt fails to take

appropriate police action and legal redress, the situation may continue to spin out of control, with escalating violence and deepening

religious polarization.

Finally, I wish to comment briefly on the Sudan section, a report

so shamefully weak, its inadequacies can only be explained as an

attempt to cover up a U.S. policy failure of historic proportions. Nowhere in the section is conveyed a sense of the ongoing genocide

being waged by the government against its southern religious and

racial minorities that was condemned in House Resolution 75 of a

year ago. Only on page 6 of an 8-page account in two short paragraphs is the war that has already killed 2 million from the Christian and animist homelands addressed, a war in which religion

plays a major roll, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The section emphasizes noteworthy improvements and concerns

itself mostly with milder bureaucratic restrictions and instances of

harassment. In its search to find improvements, the State Department report leaves the impression that government bombing of civilian targets stopped in April, when, in fact, the regime’s relentless bombing campaign continued throughout the summer and

brought to a halt the international humanitarian lifeline the south

depends on.

The report fails to address the fact that the U.S. aid is manipulated by the regime to enforce its strategy of selective mass starvation. It also makes mention of the serious charge of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in an August 14 letter

to the National Security Advisor that U.S. food aid is being chanVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:01 Jan 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 68683.TXT HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
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neled to Islamic relief groups that require conversion as a precondition to receiving the aid.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to testify.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Assad appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Assad, thank you very much for your excellent

testimony.

Acacia Shields, if you would proceed.

STATEMENT OF ACACIA SHIELDS, UZBEKISTAN RESEARCHER,

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

Ms. SHIELDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to express

my appreciation for this opportunity to speak to the Subcommittee

about the repression of religious freedom in Uzbekistan.

My remarks here will be a summary of my written statement,

which I ask to be entered into the record.

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, your statement and that of all our

witnesses will be made a part of the record.

Ms. SHIELDS. My name is Acacia Shields, and I am the

Uzbekistan researcher for Human Rights Watch based in

Tashkent. Human Rights Watch has investigated violations of civil

and political rights in Central Asia since 1990, and we have had

a field office in Uzbekistan since 1996.

For the last year and a half, I have been living in Uzbekistan

and have investigated religious repression in the country and carefully documented hundreds of cases of religiously motivated arrests, detention and torture of believers and other forms of discrimination and harassment. I have interviewed hundreds of victims and relatives of victims of religious discrimination, and, again,

I am profoundly grateful to this Subcommittee for this opportunity

to bring their stories to you and to comment on the way in which

this campaign of oppression is treated in this year’s State Department Annual Report on International Religious Freedom.

The arrests of Muslims in Uzbekistan are discriminatory. Believers are targeted for membership in unregistered Islamic groups.

Those who practice outside state-controlled mosques are also targeted for arrest. Even possession of Islamic literature is grounds

for arrest. Trials are grossly unfair as judges systematically punish

independent Muslims with lengthy terms in prison for their religious beliefs and affiliations and ignore compelling allegations of

torture.

This year’s international religious freedom report recognizes neither the antireligious nature of this repression nor the human

rights crisis it has produced. It argues that victims are engaged in

activity that is primarily political, and, therefore, that Uzbekistan

cannot be said to be violating the victim’s religious freedom.

We believe this position is misguided. We do not believe the Government of Uzbekistan has made improvements that merit credit,

as the report suggests. And we do believe that the Administration

should name Uzbekistan as a country of particular concern for religious freedom and adopt appropriate measures as foreseen by the

International Religious Freedom Act.

The arrest and conviction of thousands of independent Muslims

is now well-documented. Human Rights Watch has monitored dozens of trials and obtained officials court documents for several hunVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:01 Jan 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 68683.TXT HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
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dred additional cases. The majority of indictments and judicial verdicts state clearly that the basis for the charges and convictions is

their religious practice and beliefs, which the state then construes

as evidence of antistate activity and attempt to overthrow the constitutional order. These practices include participating in

unsanctioned prayer groups or conducting private religious teaching, membership in an unregistered Islamic organization, or, again,

possession or distribution of literature of such an organization.

The State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report

also creates a false distinction between moderate Muslims, whom

it defines as those who participate in government-run activities,

and those who operate outside the state-run Muslim hierarchy. The

Uzbeki Government, it argues, supports the former, but is intolerant of the latter. In fact, a moderate Muslim may practice within

and beyond state-run Muslim structures.

Finally, the International Religious Freedom Report gives credit

for Uzbekistan’s progress when, in fact, none is due. Its discussion

of positive improvements, for instance, cites the release of six

Christians last year prior to the release of the 1999 International

Religious Freedom Report. This is a move that we see as a calculated effort to avoid designation as a country of particular concern and to distract the Administration from the lack of progress

in the treatment of Muslims. I would add also that it is a move for

which they have already received credit last year.

The government’s campaign against pious and independent Muslims took a dramatic turn from bad to worse when Tashkent, the

capital, was rocked with several bomb explosions in February 1999.

The government immediately blamed Islamic extremists, and security forces were given carte blanche to use any and all means to

round up these so-called enemies of the state.

The arrests and convictions have continued in the year 2000 at

an alarming rate. Some who are released prior to the International

Religious Freedom Report last year were rearrested this year. The

government’s tactics in this campaign recall some of the worst moments of the Soviet era. It has created a climate of suspicion and

fear in which neighbors inform on one another, mothers turn their

sons over to police and local authorities organize hate rallies to denounce pious Muslims and their relatives as enemies of the state.

Family members are detained and even arrested by the police.

They are held hostage by authorities who state outright that until

their relatives are arrested, these mothers, fathers and other loved

ones will sit in jail.

Women are often detained and threatened with rape in front of

their husbands or sons in order to coerce the men to make self-incriminating statements. This happened to Darmon Sultanova, who

met with Ambassador Seiple during his last visit to Uzbekistan.

She recalled in that meeting how police came to her home and

asked who in the family studied Koran and how many times a day

they prayed. The officers arrested Sultanova’s sons, Uigun and

Oibek Ruzmetov, on charges of Wahhabism and detained Sultanova

and her husband. Police stripped the elderly woman naked and

handcuffed her to a radiator in a basement cell. They brought in

her sons, beaten and bloody, and threatened to rape the young

men’s mother if they did not confess to a range of charges including

35

membership in an illegal religious group and participation in several unsolved murders throughout the country. The young men

signed the police statement.

Uigun and Oibek Ruzmetov recounted their ordeal at trial and

declared their innocence, but the judge did not investigate the

charges of police abuse, and, declaring that the young men had

taken part in forbidden activities of a reactionary underground religious organization of Wahhabists, found them guilty on charges of

murder, weapons possession and illegal activities and sentenced

the young men to death. The Ruzmentov brothers were executed by

firing squad.

I would like to share one other case with you that is illustrative

of the type of wrongful arrests of pious Muslims that is being carried out by Uzbek security forces today.

Imam Abduwahid Yuldashev was deputy to an outspoken and

independent-minded religious leader, Obidhon Nazarov, who has

since fallen afoul of the Uzbek Government. Police arrested him on

falsified charges of narcotics possession. Yuldashev was later released on appeal shortly before the publication of last year’s International Religious Freedom Report. This release was lauded by

State Department officials as a sign of progress. However, this is

not the whole story.

On July 24 of this year, police rearrested Imam Yuldashev. This

time they charged him with Wahhabism and spreading jihad ideas.

This time they denied him access to a lawyer. Yuldashev is today

languishing in his second month of incommunicado detention in the

basement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs building in Tashkent,

without access to legal representation or medical treatment. There

are many others like him.

Just yesterday on September 6, 15 men charged with membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir were sentenced to prison terms ranging

from 12 to 16 years.

This year’s report on international religious freedom notes the efforts made by the United States to remind Uzbekistan of its obligation to respect freedom of conscience, to differentiate between terrorists and peaceful Muslim believers, but this message is not getting through. Visiting U.S. officials have raised concerns, issued

demarches on specific cases and pressed for changes in the domestic laws, but the Government of Uzbekistan has only intensified its

campaign. More must be done.

As you know, the International Religious Freedom Act was designed in part to ensure a clear and consistent U.S. policy on freedom of religion. While the Uzbek Government sometimes receives

sharp criticism from U.S. officials, it also received an estimated $30

million in U.S. assistance in 1999. Since 1995, Uzbekistan also received $980 million in credits from the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

Awarding this kind of privilege and benefit in the face of egregious

violations casts doubt on the United States’ commitment to religious freedom and gives abuser states such as Uzbekistan the impression that they can carry on with oppressive policies and still

profit.

In conclusion, I want to emphasize that Uzbekistan is in a profound human rights crisis, at the center of which is religious persecution. The Administration should abide by its legislative obligaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:01 Jan 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 68683.TXT HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
36

tions and designate Uzbekistan as a country of particular concern

for religious freedom.

I want to thank you again for giving me the opportunity to share

our findings, and I welcome any questions.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Shields appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Miss Shields, for your very

compelling testimony.

I would like to now invite our third panelist Dr. Zou, a Falun

Gong practitioner.

STATEMENT OF JIMMY ZOU, FALUN GONG PRACTITIONER

AND FORMER DETAINEE IN CHINA

Mr. ZOU. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this important hearing. It gives the millions of Chinese—— Mr. SMITH. Could you try to turn on the microphone—I think it

may be turned off—and bring one of the microphones close.

Mr. ZOU. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this important hearing. It gives millions of Chinese Falun Gong practitioners an opportunity to voice their suffering in their appeal to the

world for their search for help. On behalf of tens of millions of Chinese Falun Gong practitioners, I would like to express my gratitude

for the House resolution that you introduced last November and

the law you have recently sponsored.

Please allow me to introduce myself briefly. My name is Jimmy

Zou. I came from China and am now an American citizen. Currently I work as an actuary with a Federal insurance agency in

Washington, DC. Falun Gong is a self-improvement of mind and

body from traditional Chinese culture. I attended a free Falun

Gong workshop in 1996 in Washington, D.C. Since then I have

been practicing Falun Gong exercises every day. I also tried to become a better person at home and in workplace by following Falun

Gong principle: Truthfulness, compassion and tolerance.

Last summer I took leave and traveled back to China. I arrived

in Beijing by train from my hometown on November 30. The next

day I walked by Tiananmen Square and went to see the ceremony

of the changing guards of the national flag. I was with a group of

some 200 tourists when a policeman approached me and asked me

if I was a Falun Gong practitioner. I hesitated 1 second and then

said yes. Immediately I was taken into a police car and sent to

Tiananmen Square police station.

I kept demanding my rights. Nobody answered me. The police

forced a body search on me first and took Mr. Li’s book, Zhuan

Falun, away from me. I protested and said that they had no right

to rob my personal belongings for I did not commit any crime.

Because I protested for my right, a policeman said I should be

punished. Then came three policemen who surrounded me. One of

them took away my glasses by force and then struck my both eyes

fiercely with his fists, and the other two punched my shoulders and

arms and kicked my legs. In 2 minutes I felt dizzy, and my left eye

swelled like a bulb.

Then three policemen forced my arms to be crossed behind my

back, handcuffed me in a special way. One hand came down from

above the shoulder and the other hand came up from my lower

back. I cried out with pain. There were another eight Falun Gong

37

practitioners, all handcuffed like that, in the room. A young lady

handcuffed stood on my left; an old lady, over age 60, also handcuffed like that on my right. For every 4 or 5 minutes a police

shocked each person’s neck, hands and kidneys with an electric cattle prod.

This special way of handcuff caused severe physical pain. It is

usually only applied to criminal offenders in China. After a few

minutes the pain in my arms and shoulders was unbearable. All

the other eight Falun Gong practitioners have been handcuffed like

that for at least a half hour. A middle-age gentleman, his both

hands were swollen twice the normal size and purple color. I felt

his hands must be injured.

The police also ordered us to bend down our heads close to the

ground to increase the physical pain. The old lady on my side

sometimes stood up to reduce the pain. I could not believe any

human person could torture an old lady like that.

About 6 o’clock in the afternoon, I was sent to another detention

facility in Beijing where I was detained in a room together with

other Falun Gong practitioners. There were a high school teacher,

college students, doctors, peasants and community engineers. More

than half of them were women. Most of them were detained because of visiting official appealing bureau and trying to appeal for

Falun Gong and calling on the government to correct the mistake

and stop crackdown on Falun Gong.

I ask them how the government would punish them. They said

that they would be sent back to their hometown and detained for

at least another 15 days. If they would not sign a pledge giving up

practicing Falun Gong, they might be sent to labor camps. Some

practitioners kept talking to the police to explain that Falun Gong

is a practice for mind and body. We are all good people. The government should not treat us like criminals.

After 6 days of detention, I was released. Later I retrieved my

passport and returned to America.

I hope the Chinese Government would respect people’s basic

human rights and the rights guaranteed by Chinese Constitution,

and thank you, Chairman for giving me this opportunity.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Zou appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Dr. Zou.

Pastor Her.

STATEMENT OF PHA HER, PASTOR, LAO EVANGELICAL

CHURCH

Reverend HER. [The following statement was delivered through

an interpreter.] Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the

Committee. Because of the language barrier, that I cannot speak

English, I would ask your permission to let my interpreter read a

portion of my testimony.

My name is Pastor Pha Her. I am one of the pastors of the Lao

Evangelical Church in Vientiane, Laos. My responsibilities are to

recruit and provide training for new pastors.

This year marks the 50 year anniversary that the Gospel has

reached the Hmong-Lao in Laos. My wife and I, along with eight

other ministers and elders, were invited to attend the anniversary

38

celebration that was held in Minneapolis, MN, on July 30 to August 4, 2000.

The Lao Communist Government does not want any religious

group getting together worshipping openly because they fear that

organized religious groups are perceived as resistance activity

against the government. For many year the only way to conduct

church services for the Christians were to get together as a small

group inside individuals’ homes or outside in the jungle where no

authorities can see. Basically we are operating underground. We

provide services for them quietly and intelligently during the day

or at night.Most of the groups did not have Bible, so we have to

share one Bible among the group.

The government implemented a very strict regulation against all

religious group. More foreign missionaries were detained. No international development projects which were affiliated with Christians were allow to implement within the scope of helping Christians. Thus party government began to harass and arrest pastors

and elders. The Lao Evangelical Church started to shift hands due

to constant harassment and duress. This was all happening in contradiction to the Constitution of the Republic of Laos, which was

adopted on August 14, 1991, where freedom of worship was allowed. Prime Minister Numhak Pomsavanh and President

Phumivong Vichit wrote in Article 3, section 30 that any Laos citizen have the right to worship any religion.

The Lao Government accused the Christians of being enemy of

the state. We were forced out of all villages in accusation of being

Christians who were friends and allies of the United States and

friends of Christians from foreign countries. As Christians we were

accused of receiving money from other countries to bribe the Lao

to convert to Christianity and for organizing resistance against the

party government. All these were untrue.

The Lao Communist Government falsely accused the Christians

of not worshipping, revolution, waging war against the Lao Communist Party Government and among other religious groups. It is

simply not true. In fact, the Christians were forced to recant their

faith or they would be imprisoned without any justification. Therefore, there is no peace for the people in Laos. We constantly worry

about our safety every day.

Recently U.S. State Department’s executive summary stated that

Laos is among the significant improvements in religious freedom.

Apparently most of the problems against religious freedom occurred

among remote villages in Laos. I invite the U.S. State Department

officials to travel the remote areas to observe these atrocities. The

State Department had contacted the Lao Government to discuss or

express the situation, but the Lao Government did nothing to improve the situation.

I personally believe that these situations are getting worse. As

you will see later in my testimony, in addition, I am concerned that

more Christians are being arrested and imprisoned. Most of the

cases involve the Hmong ethnic, including some of the recent refugee returnees from Thailand refugee camp.

Since my youth I have served God faithfully, work with integrity,

served the church righteously and taught them to obey and respect

the government and its laws. Incidentally, the Lao Government has

39

a history of discrimination against certain ethnic groups. They

have no respect of their own Constitution. They arrested and imprisoned many ethnic groups, particularly in remote villages, and

especially the Hmong. The fact that Hmong have several religious

beliefs does not mean any religion is bad or is against the government.

Recently the Government of Laos passed out documents saying

that whoever is a religious person must recant their faith or face

imprisonment and have their property or farm taken away. This

year the believers were forced to recant their faith, and many were

arrested. Many churches were closed and taken over by the Lao authority. From a foreigner’s perspective, it may seem as if there is

nothing wrong. The truth is the Christians are being greatly oppressed and being forced to imprisonment, a list of 70 names of the

imprisoned Christians included in my testimony. The Lao Government arrests and imprisons Christians all over the place throughout the country. In addition, I could only account Christian imprisonment. I am sure there are many others who are not Christians,

but are arrested and imprisoned for different reasons as well.

Before July 15, 2000, a total of 33 churches and service places

were ordered to close and were locked so no one could get in to worship God. It could be more to close and took over by the Lao Communist Party by now. A list is attached in my testimony.

If the believers agree to recant, they could avoid imprisonment.

The authority forced the believers to sign an agreement and then

would report to high authority that the believers did it in their own

free will to recant their faith without being forced. If anyone questioned or commented about it, the government would consider those

people as opposing the government. They were arrested and were

forced to comply.

After arrival in the United States, I was notified that my job as

a Bible instructor of the Lao Evangelical Church had been terminated, and my name was reported to the authority of the Ministry

of Interior. There is no guarantee for my safety if I return to my

homeland, Laos, because I am subjected to arrest.

The last telephone conversation I had with my family was on the

evening of September 3, 2000. I was informed that after my wife

and I had left Laos, more churches were locked up and guarded by

the Communist authority. I now face a difficult struggle in my life,

especially since we have five little children behind in Laos, the ages

ranging from 11⁄2 to 13 years old.

My wife and I have determined that it would not be safe for us

to return to Laos in the meantime. We miss our children very

much. After my wife heard about the insecurity of our life, she

cried out about our children’s safety and well-being.

In conclusion, the problem of the religious persecution in Laos is

a very complicated issue. The search for a permanent solution requires the participation of the superpower nations like the United

States and the international community’s strong commitment on

the part of monitoring the Lao People’s Democratic Republic Government to make sure that the people have freedom. Therefore, I

strongly submit to you that it is essential for the United States, the

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40

volved in the search for a permanent solution to the political problem in Laos.

Many solutions to the problem of Laos are just Band-Aids, while

other solutions get bungled in red tape. The most effective way to

eliminate the religious persecution in Laos is to make sure that the

people in Laos have the right to worship in their own ways. To provide people in Laos with long-term security, a delegation of human

rights and religious right groups can be organized to go to Laos for

the purpose of gathering information on various cases happening

among religious groups, including those in remote areas. This is

only just a start to cracking down the oppression of Christians

there. I am afraid that the Lao Communist Government can crack

down on other religious groups at any time.

The economic, political, social and religion in Laos, however, is

seldom able to compete for attention like other countries. This will

make the resolution to human rights in Laos both urgent and compelling into the international community. Therefore, I call on the

U.S. Congress, all countries, other governments and human rights

organizations to look into this situation in Laos.

In addition, I would like to recommend the following points:

First, release those imprisoned as described above because they are

impoverished, and wives and children are suffering. Second, don’t

force the believers to recant their faith, and leave them alone so

that they can have a place to serve their God. Third, stop the duress and the accusations against the believers. Fourth, Lao Government gives back their churches and any property that belongs to

the believers. Five, give back freedom and equal rights of religion

to everyone in Laos.

God bless America, and God bless the people in Laos.

[The prepared statement of Pastor Her appears in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very, very much for your testimony.

I would like to ask a few opening questions if I could.

Ms. Shields, in reading your testimony and hearing you present

it, I thought of Mr. Assad, who pointed out that the Middle East

negotiations keep the Administration from designating Egypt as a

country of particular concern. But that raises a question of why

Uzbekistan? What could be the political reason for excluding it,

given this reprehensible record of repression against, as you point

out, pious Muslims. And the fact that Ambassador Seiple actually

met with one of those who has actually been through this certainly

must have brought home to him the severity of the situation. But

when you put together the numbers and the systemic and pervasive nature of the repression, laid out the way you have, it seems

inescapable that it ought to be on the list.

Just looking at the very clear and unambiguous language of the

statute—and, again, what we do with that in terms of our remedy

or attempted remedy is left to prudent people to decide what is

best—but as to the actual designation, do you have any speculation

as to why Uzbekistan is kept off?

Ms. SHIELDS. I would hesitate to speculate on behalf of the State

Department and its motivations; however, I can say that the government seems to have loaned its language to the State Department, and the State Department for whatever reason has adopted

it almost whole cloth. And I would really caution against the danVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:01 Jan 11, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 68683.TXT HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
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ger of accepting explanations and language offered by abuser states

that is clearly designed to cover up the abuse as actual explanation. For instance, the improvements cited in the report give us

a lot of trouble. And I would also like some explanation of why

these are designated as improvements.

One of the three developments that the report points to this year

was a roundtable held in Uzbekistan to discuss religious freedom.

That roundtable—I attended that roundtable in which government

functionaries delivered prepared speeches regarding the amount of

religious freedom already available in Uzbekistan. This was a show

put on for U.S. Government officials in attendance. It did not include discussion, it did not include any recommendations for

change, and there were certainly no conclusions and no changes

made. This is clearly not progress and should not pass as such.

Mr. SMITH. Could you speculate as to whether or not you think

oil or pipelines might have anything to do with it?

Ms. SHIELDS. I think that—I would not speculate in that direction. I think that the United States has decided that Uzbekistan

will be its island of stability in Central Asia and has put all of its

eggs into that basket, and will continue this policy, it seems, despite the fact that Uzbekistan is going down the road of a pariah

state and ignoring any and all opportunities to make improvements

and join the family of democratic nations.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you.

Mr. Assad, any further comments you might want to make on

Egypt? I would make one passing reference that I raised the massacre, the 1999 massacre, myself with President Mubarak when he

was visiting, and not only did he go into very savvy spin control,

he immediately pointed out that several of his top people, or at

least one in particular, Boutros-Ghali, is a Coptic, and he immediately walked over and started telling me how I had my facts

wrong and I was misinformed and that they were doing everything

they can. It was just a local issue.

You seem to indicate in your testimony it is much more pervasive

than that—you might want to comment on that. Egypt has been

very good, I have to admit, at tamping down the issue itself. It is

not going to go away, and I think many of us on both sides of the

aisle are going to continue bringing it up because it seems to be

a worsening situation.

The second issue that you bring up, with regard to the Sudan,

is that the report fails to address the fact that U.S. aid is manipulated by the regime to enforce the regime’s strategy of selective

mass starvation. You also point out the serious charge of the U.S.

Commission in its August 14 letter about the Islamic groups requiring conversion as a precondition to receiving food aid. Could

you elaborate on these two points?

Mr. ASSAD. Mr. Chairman, for the first point about President

Mubarak and the Egyptian Government’s official response to the

Al-Kosheh, it has been unfortunate that despite the overwhelming

evidence, including photographs and documentation by Egyptian

human rights organizations and Muslim observers in the area, that

have documented this case, it appears that the Egyptian Government is more concerned about its image internationally and does

not want the world to know that there is a problem. And for—

42

many of the Coptic activists, both in the United States and in

Egypt, have pointed out that Egypt needs to recognize, first of all,

that there is a Coptic problem and that Copts do have problems

that warrant the government’s attention. So it is not surprising to

see officials like Minister Boutros-Ghali and the President himself

denying persecution.

Often Coptic leaders in Egypt under pressure by the government

would publicly deny that there is persecution. But I think it has

been seen very clearly that after the massacre of 2000, that even

the Coptic Pope has been very vocal, which he usually refrains

from making such remarks in criticizing the government and calling for investigations.

So our hope is that the government leaders would realize that

this issue, like you mention, Mr. Chairman, will not go away, and

that there will be a continued interest from the international community about what happens to Egypt’s Coptic community.

Mr. ASSAD. Also, a brief comment on your second question about

the Commission’s letter to National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.

It has been reported to the Commission by two different witnesses,

one called the Commission from the Sudan reporting that there are

many aid organizations, particularly Muslim organizations operating sometimes out of Khartoum, that are withholding—I should

mention these organizations are recipients of USAID funds—and

are withholding aid from Christians and coerce them and sometimes force them to convert to Islam before that aid is delivered.

Mr. SMITH. Reverend Her, earlier you heard the Ambassador,

Ambassador Seiple, speak to the situation in Laos, which is frankly

contrary to your testimony in terms of improvements versus lack

of improvements. Do you think that Laos ought to be considered a

country of particular concern to the United States and therefore

come under the possibility of being sanctioned?

Implicit in the Ambassador’s statement was an assertion that in

this so-called ‘‘context of diplomacy,’’ sometimes you might actually

hurt people by naming a country as one of particular concern, that

the people inside of Laos would actually be more injured by designating the Laotian Government.

Reverend HER. I believe that the Laotian Government have tried

for the last 25 years to solve its own problem and they still cannot.

And I see like the best way issue that we need help from the international community to step in to help solve the problem.

Mr. SMITH. OK. Let me ask a question of Dr. Zou. I have almost

on a daily basis gone to various Web sites to check out the latest

indignity committed against Falun Gong by the Chinese Government. And it is not only the repression that is contemptible, the

government’s ongoing use of academics to claim that Chinese public

opinion supports the crackdown on the Falun Gong could not be

further from the truth. The Chinese dictatorship is what supports

that. The world community doesn’t support that, it vigorously opposes it.

In any other context the pretext used by the government would

be laughable. But there are real victims, people who have been incarcerated, such as yourself, who have actually suffered torture, as

you described that extension of the arms behind your back. What

should the U.S. Government do? I mean, we—this Administration

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and I say this with sadness, the majority of Republicans and a minority of Democrats concurring—have stripped away the use of

sanctions, in terms of economic most favored nation status, or as

it is now called normal trading relations, which in my view gave

the green light to the dictatorship to do as they will to the Falun

Gong or Catholics or Tibetans or anyone else in China. But that

won’t be the last word. There will be a number of us who continue

to speak out. What should the new Administration do vis-a-vis

China, the largest country, amidst this in-your-face crackdown? It

seems to me that we have done so little other than speak out and

express our concerns. What would be your recommendations as a

living, breathing witness to the repression?

I will get those when I return. Regrettably there is another vote

on the floor that is almost concluded. I do have to get to the floor

for what I think is a series of votes and then our chief counsel, Mr.

Rees, will ask a few questions and then close the hearing. But I

look forward to seeing what your recommendations would be to us,

because it seems we have squandered most of the arrows that were

in our quiver, economically, to really try to persuade the Chinese

to do what is right.

Mr. ZOU. Mr. Chairman, because the Falun Gong is self-improvement of mind in the body and we have no position on the—like economic sanction or social measure you can take to, you know, to

pressure Chinese Government, but certainly in the hope the American Government and calling on the Chinese Government to engage

a peaceful dialogue with practitioners and to stop the persecution

in China and also to condemn in the China’s Government and

their—the crime they committed and to—and also in the—I believe

the U.S. Government we will make a wise decision in like how to,

you know, deal with either trade or other measures between the

U.S. Government and the Chinese Government. And that is what

I like to say.

Mr. REES. I will just ask one question that Congressman Smith

would have asked if he had been able to remain and then we will

close the hearing. For all the witnesses, you heard the Ambassador’s testimony to the effect that putting a country on a list of

countries of particular concern, even if you could technically justify

it with the facts—the definition is they are either engaging in or

tolerating particularly severe denials of religious freedom—but if

you put them on the list, they are going to stop talking to you, and

they might get worse. If you leave them off the list, maybe you can

make some other improvement. So his argument is that you may

be hurting the people that you are trying to help by following the

literal terms of the statute and putting them on the list if they

have committed particularly severe forms of persecution or denial

of religious freedom.

Now, three of you live or work in countries that are not on the

list, that are not listed as countries of particular concern—Egypt,

Uzbekistan, and Laos. Dr. Zou, your situation was in a country

that we did put on the list. What is your reaction to that argument

in the context of the country that you know about? Would continuing to talk quietly to them be more effective or would publicly

identifying them as a particular severe violator of religious freedom

be more effective?

44

Mr. ZOU. My personal opinion, it may not be right, is the fact

that you put the country who committed those crimes on the list

itself is not because simply state the fact those in the crime you

are committed does not like—for example, you mention that because of this some government would, you know, hurt their people

more, but even they are doing that that is not because what you

are doing, you know, in the state or give all the facts and put those

facts out. That is because they simply do not want to change and

correct their mistakes.

My opinion is you put out those facts and let more people know

because people all have their conscience no matter their government or individuals and they will do whatever they can to help

those people. If you hide, you know, those facts, that is not going

to change the situation either. So my personal thought is speak of

is better way.

Mr. REES. Pastor Her.

Reverend HER. Mr. Chairman, I agree with the Ambassador, the

illustration that we should peacefully negotiate or talk to the government, the government. However, I believe that the communist

government, they like to be thought peaceful but they doing harm

behind it. And if the Ambassador want to pursue his way, I would

like to request that he should monitoring very closely with the Laotian Government because the—usually the Laotian Government,

they will talk to the foreign diplomat in a nice way, but when they

turn around behind them, what they do to the people is an opposite

way. So I would like the U.S. Government to monitor very closely

on the issue.

Mr. REES. Thank you.

Mr. Assad.

Mr. ASSAD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would like to, just

thinking of Ambassador Seiple’s remarks on China when he declared that China was decided to put China as a country of particular concern, after the failure of all private diplomatic initiatives, that were taken in this regard. But it is important to remember that while the diplomatic efforts are taking place people continue to suffer in these countries. In respect to Egypt I again reiterate the fact that persecution still exists in Egypt, but I think that

the State Department report needs to report the facts and make its

designations irrespective of any strategic or economic interest that

we might have in some countries. And in many cases we have seen

in Egypt the Copts church has been raising the concerns with the

Egyptian Government. We have complaints that date back to 1972.

But yet the same complaints are being raised today.

So I think that in these cases, that publicly and honestly reporting on the activities of these countries, that might be the best hope

that these minorities have.

Mr. REES. Ms. Shields.

Ms. SHIELDS. Ambassador Seiple pointed out that designation

should sometimes be held up when diplomatic initiatives are in

play. I would question the use of that. The law, as has already

been pointed out, gives a lot of flexibility for diplomatic initiatives,

even after a country has been designated a country of particular

concern. But thinking about Uzbekistan, I can see where diplomacy

has not worked. The issue of religious freedom has been raised

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there in talks that have not yielded results at the highest level.

Secretary Albright visited Uzbekistan and spoke about religious

freedom with President Karimov. She emphasized the importance

of distinguishing between peaceful Muslim believers and terrorists,

those who use violence to achieve their ends. There has only been

a downward slide since.

I would also say that last year when we saw the first release of

the religious freedom report, Uzbekistan feared that it would make

the list. And for the first time, we saw releases of religious prisoners, including six Christians, for which they have been given

ample credit, and some Muslim believers. Now, many of the Muslim believers have been rearrested in the subsequent crackdown,

but we see what effect even the fear of being named a country of

particular concern can have. And I would say that to designate

Uzbekistan as a country of particular concern would only do a service to the people of Uzbekistan, and finally telling the truth and

calling it like it is.

Mr. REES. Thank you. Pursuant to the previous order of the

Chairman, this hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 5:10 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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A P P E N D I X

SEPTEMBER 7, 2000

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