[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE GLOBAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM CRISIS AND ITS CHALLENGE TO U.S. FOREIGN
POLICY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 16, 2016
__________
Serial No. 114-217
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BRAD SHERMAN, California
DANA ROHRABACHER, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
MATT SALMON, Arizona KAREN BASS, California
DARRELL E. ISSA, California WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama AMI BERA, California
PAUL COOK, California ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas GRACE MENG, New York
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TED S. YOHO, Florida ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
CURT CLAWSON, Florida BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
DANIEL DONOVAN, New York
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
International Organizations
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina KAREN BASS, California
CURT CLAWSON, Florida DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee AMI BERA, California
DANIEL DONOVAN, New York
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
The Honorable David N. Saperstein, Ambassador-at-Large for
International Religious Freedom, U.S. Department of State...... 5
Robert P. George, Ph.D., McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence,
Princeton University (former chairman, U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom)............................... 33
M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., president, American Islamic Forum for
Democracy (former vice-chair, U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom)............................................. 51
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable David N. Saperstein: Prepared statement............ 9
Robert P. George, Ph.D.: Prepared statement...................... 38
M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D.: Prepared statement........................ 55
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 80
Hearing minutes.................................................. 81
The Honorable David N. Saperstein: Exploring the Trends and
Consequences of Religious Registration: A Global Overview...... 82
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New Jersey, and chairman, Subcommittee on
Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International
Organizations: 2016 Annual Report of the United States
Commission on International Religious Freedom.................. 83
Written responses from the Honorable David N. Saperstein to
questions submitted for the record by the Honorable Christopher
H. Smith....................................................... 89
THE GLOBAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM CRISIS
AND ITS CHALLENGE TO U.S. FOREIGN
POLICY
----------
THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 2016
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
Global Human Rights, and International Organizations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:40 p.m., in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. The subcommittee will come to order.
And good afternoon to everybody.
First of all, let me say I deeply regret the delay. We did
have a series of more than two dozen votes on the floor. No one
can ever anticipate that. So I thank you for your patience and
forbearance.
And we have no further votes, which is a plus and a minus.
Some of the members are getting on planes to go home, and that
is the minus. The plus is we won't be interrupted for the
remainder of the hearing.
Let me begin by just noting I have chaired numerous
hearings on religious freedom since the mid-1990s, starting
with my first two: One was called ``The Worldwide Persecution
of Jews,'' in 1996; and ``The Persecution of Christians
Worldwide,'' which followed just a few weeks later. Ever since,
I have chaired dozens of hearings examining worldwide attacks
on religious freedom.
Tragically, especially in recent years, the situation has
significantly deteriorated and begs a significant, expanded,
and sustained response from the United States and from the
world community.
On May 26, our subcommittee asked ``What's next?'' after
Secretary Kerry's genocide designation. Our witnesses made
excellent suggestions, including Supreme Knight Carl Anderson,
who proposed--and I just encapsulate his recommendations--that
we increase aid and ensure that it actually reaches those in
need, support the long-term survival in the region of those
ancient indigenous religions and ethnic communities, and punish
the perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity.
And I would note parenthetically that I have authored a
resolution and had a series of hearings in this room about
establishing a hybrid, a regional court, like we had in Sierra
Leone. And we actually had David Crane, the chief prosecutor,
who said, while the ICC is a nice idea, it has proven itself
largely incapable of taking on a responsibility such as this.
But a hybrid court, as we saw with Charles Taylor, gets those
who commit these horrific genocide acts and puts them behind
bars. And, in the case of Charles Taylor, it is for 50 years.
Carl Anderson also emphasized that we assist victims of
genocide in attaining refugee status. And that poses very
significant problems, where Christians do not have the kind of
access to the UNHCR that they ought to have and never get in
the queue and, as a result, end game, never get here or any
other third country for asylum.
And, also, a very interesting point he made was: Prepare
now for the foreseeable future of human rights challenges, as
ISIS-controlled territories are liberated, by ensuring that
Christians and other minorities have equal rights to decide the
future.
We are very, very grateful to have Ambassador David
Saperstein, the Ambassador-at-Large for the International
Religious Freedom Office, a man who has committed so much of
his life to religious freedom, who will provide insight and a
roadmap for going forward.
It is also a very high honor to welcome the outgoing
chairman of the United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom, Dr. Robert George, as well as Dr. Zuhdi
Jasser--two religious freedom leaders with exemplary records of
service.
Religious liberty is called America's first freedom and one
of our Nation's founding ideals. It is the right to believe or
not believe and to practice one's religion according to the
dictates of one's own conscience.
The right is not only an American value, it is a universal
principle. The right to religious freedom flows from the
dignity of each and every human person and, as such, deserves
to be protected everywhere and for everyone--no exceptions.
Sadly, in large parts of the world, this fundamental
freedom is constantly and brutally under siege. The world is
experiencing a crisis of religious freedom that poses a direct
challenge to U.S. interests in the Middle East, central and
east Asia, Russia, China, and sub-Saharan Africa.
In Burma, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, there are Muslim,
Christian, and Hindu minorities facing systematic violence and
discrimination. In China, Vietnam, and North Korea, independent
religious practice is viewed as an unwanted competitor to the
communist state, leading to severe restrictions, arrests, and
systemic torture.
Governments are not the only ones repressing religious
practice. Non-state actors increasingly are a pernicious threat
to religious liberty around the world. In the Middle East,
terrorist groups like ISIS have been committing genocide in an
attempt to exterminate ancient religious communities.
This subcommittee's hearings include, most recently, one
last month with witnesses from civil society who did focus on
what is next when we are talking about the designation made by
Secretary Kerry.
We must ensure that we are doing everything we can to
prevent genocide, mass atrocities, and war crimes against
religious minorities in Iraq and Syria and to ensure
perpetrators are held accountable.
This is also true of Boko Haram, as I mentioned earlier.
Both Greg Simpkins, our staff director, and I have viewed
firsthand churches and mosques that have been destroyed by Boko
Haram. I will never forget being in Jos, Nigeria, visiting with
survivors who told harrowing stories of what it was like to
have car bombs and people with AK-47s bursting into their
congregations to destroy as many people as they possibly could.
It is no coincidence that the worst violators of religious
freedom globally are often the biggest threat to our Nation.
They are those who wish the Americans the most harm. Thus, the
promotion of religious liberty is also important to our foreign
policy initiatives, especially the promotion of human rights in
general and democracy in particular.
Eighteen years ago, Congress passed the landmark
International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. That act made
protection and promotion of religious freedom a priority, which
it had not been in U.S. foreign policy. Three different
administrations have developed religious freedom policy, and
three different administrations have had some success but also
some failures to check the overall rise of religious-related
violence and the decline of religious freedom globally.
It is worth asking, what can we do better? Are new tools or
ideas needed to help address the crisis? Does the International
Religious Freedom Act need to be upgraded to reflect 21st
century realities? Where are the flash points of persecution
that need additional attention and resources, and how do we
address them?
That is why I introduced the Frank R. Wolf International
Religious Freedom Act, H.R. 1150, along with Representative
Anna Eshoo. The bill is named after former Congressman Frank
Wolf, the primary author and great champion of the original
International Religious Freedom Act, and that legislation has
been landmark and decisive in its implications.
H.R. 1150 strengthens the role played by the Ambassador-at-
Large for Religious Freedom within the State Department, gives
the Ambassador more tools, and the ability to better utilize
existing resources. The bill will elevate the Ambassador's
status, sending the signal inside the government bureaucracy
that this policy a priority; it is not an asterisk at the end
of a list of talking points that the President or Secretary of
State has when he meets with his foreign interlocutors,
especially Prime Ministers and Presidents.
More importantly, it will demonstrate to victims of
religious persecution that they are not forgotten. As it says
in the Bible, ``Hope deferred makes the heart sick.'' And if
people think that nobody has their back, people do lose heart.
The bill also provides a way for the administration to
better coordinate international religious freedom policy. And
there are an ever-expanding number of special envoys, special
advisers, and Ambassadors who often have overlapping mandates.
U.S. diplomats also need better training to recognize and
understand the issues that they will face during their service
abroad, not some cursory, superficial ``this is what religious
freedom is, these are what the different denominations and
beliefs adhere to, religious tenets,'' to really get into the
thick of it, so when they are deployed--and that includes
Ambassadors--they are better equipped to deal in-country with
the challenges that they will face.
The bill gives the President new options to address the
decimation visited upon religious minorities by non-state
actors and terrorist groups.
I have to point out, this subcommittee and my good friend
and I and others have worked so hard for 3 years to get a
Foreign Terrorist Organization designation for Boko Haram. If
you go back and look at the record, we had Assistant Secretary
of State Johnny Carson sit right where Rabbi Saperstein sits
now, telling me, telling my subcommittee that they are just
trying to embarrass the Presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, rather
than being a radical Islamic organization intent on forcing
people to become Muslim, and a radical portion of that as well,
and also to kill pious Muslims who stand in their way.
It took 3 years. It wasn't until we were going to mark up a
bill in this room, the day of it, under John Kerry, not under
Secretary Clinton, because she was against it, that we had a
designation of Foreign Terrorist Organization for Boko Haram.
And we all know they are now the deadliest organization in the
world, killing, maiming, raping, and butchering.
Finally, this bill recognizes the connection between
advancing religious freedom globally and U.S. national security
and economic interests, the interrelatedness of all of it. The
evidence has shown repeatedly that U.S. national security and
economic interests are directly tied to religious freedom.
Religious freedom can act to undermine the religious-related
violence perpetrated by non-state actors.
This bill, H.R. 1150, was unanimously passed by the House.
It is pending in the Senate. Our hope and prayer is that the
Senate will take it up.
And, again, before going to our distinguished rabbi,
Ambassador-at-Large David Saperstein, I would like to yield to
Mark Meadows for any opening comments he might have.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I will be very brief because, obviously, we want to hear
from you.
I think the troubling thing for most Americans and, indeed,
for most of the country and the world at large is that rhetoric
that we defend religious liberties without action actually does
more harm than good.
And I think, Ambassador, what I am hopeful to hear from you
is the action that will follow our rhetoric and where we have
to truly stand up--and we are seeing it across many of the
headlines--on what religious liberty is and what it is not and
really where we have to focus on as a body here in Congress
and, indeed, as the beacon of freedom in the world that the
United States holds is that we have to stand up.
We can't exchange the protection of religious liberties for
economic gain. We can't exchange the protection of religious
liberties for potential geopolitical gains. What we must do is
stand up for religious freedom, and the rest will follow.
And so, Ambassador, I welcome you, as I do our two
distinguished guests that will be on the second panel.
And I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Meadows.
But, just very briefly, Ambassador Saperstein is the
Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. He was
confirmed by the Senate in December 2014, sworn in and assumed
his duties in January 2015.
Ambassador Saperstein previously served for 40 years as the
director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. A
rabbi and an attorney for 35 years, Rabbi Saperstein taught
seminars in First Amendment church-state law and in Jewish law
at Georgetown University Law Center.
He has served on the boards of numerous national
organizations, including the NAACP. In 1999, Ambassador
Saperstein served as the first chair of the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom.
Rabbi Saperstein, it is an honor to welcome you. And please
consume whatever time you think is necessary.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DAVID N. SAPERSTEIN, AMBASSADOR-AT-
LARGE FOR INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
STATE
Ambassador Saperstein. Chairman Smith and Mr. Meadows, I am
really honored and pleased to be here, and thank you for this
opportunity to discuss the critical issue of religious freedom.
I am honored, as well, to address this with two such
distinguished advocates for religious freedom, Robbie George
and Zuhdi Jasser.
I commend this subcommittee, all of you on this
subcommittee, for your continuing focus and your effective
efforts on behalf of the vital universal human right of
religious freedom. And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your
longstanding attention to international religious freedom
violations, cases, and concerns. I truly cherish our
partnership that we have had over the years.
And one has only to read the headlines in recent weeks and
months to know that the challenges to religious freedom are
daunting.
First and foremost, we absolutely must address the horrific
and brutal predations of Daesh's activities in Iraq and Syria.
In the months since Secretary Kerry's statement that, in his
judgment, Daesh is responsibility for genocide, crimes against
humanity, and ethnic cleansing in the areas that it controls,
we have significantly strengthened our efforts to ensure a
viable future for members of impacted communities.
We must, as well, seek accountability for the heinous acts
committed by the Daesh terrorists. As Secretary Kerry has said,
the United States will strongly support efforts to collect,
document, preserve, analyze the evidence of atrocities, and we
will do all we can to see that the perpetrators are held
accountable.
In liberated areas, we are funding the investigation and
documentation of mass graves, and we are looking into ways to
use satellite telemetry and geospatial analysis to identify
potential atrocity sites that remain in areas under Daesh
control.
With Iraqi and international agencies, we are engaged in
discussions on how to best establish transitional justice
programs to be developed now, before people begin to move back
to communities, in order to mitigate the potential for renewed
sectarian violence.
We are also actively working with the Government of Iraq to
identify and return cultural and religious artifacts stolen and
later sold by Daesh to fund its activities. We are also
working, particularly in partnership with the Smithsonian
Institution, with local communities to help them determine how
they can preserve their religious and cultural heritage,
including by preserving churches, shrines, cemeteries,
synagogues, and mosques.
As a tangible outcome of the Secretary's genocide
announcement, in July we will be convening in Washington an
intergovernmental conference to advance ways to protect
religious minorities in Iraq and Syria. Before and during this
meeting, we plan to map out the existing programs the varied
countries are doing, identify current gaps in programming,
discuss potential next steps, and to strengthen global
collaboration in our assistance to religious and ethnic
minorities in Iraq and Syria.
To move to another topic, the Secretary has announced the
designation of 10 Countries of Particular Concern for engaging
in or tolerating systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of
religious freedom, which included for the first time the
addition of Tajikistan to that list. The CPC countries include
Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
I testified earlier before you that we wanted to make the
CPC process more consistent, more robust. We would not limit
ourselves to announcing these designations only at one point in
the year, usually around the report. We can add countries
whenever justified, as Tajikistan exemplifies, even as we work
assertively to develop action plans with existing CPC countries
to help them take steps necessary to move them off the CPC
list.
During my 18 months as Ambassador-at-Large, I have traveled
to 20 countries, including 3 of the 10 CPCs. I will visit two
more of them this July. During my trips, I have met with
countless government officials, parliamentarians, human rights
activists, religious leaders, believers from nearly all world
religious traditions, including skeptics and nonbelievers,
including those seeking reforms in their religious traditions
and those seeking reforms within their governments, raising our
concerns consistently along the way.
What has stood out is the incredible irrepressible spirit
of all the individuals who risk discrimination, imprisonment,
and even death for simply seeking to live out their lives in
accordance with their conscience.
It is particularly memorable to me that I was in a crowded
Sudanese courtroom in August 2015 to observe the release of two
prominent prisoners of conscience, Pastor Yat Michael Ruot and
Pastor Peter Yen Reith, for simply speaking about their faith.
They had faced multiple charges, including blasphemy, promoting
hatred amongst religious groups. They never should have been
charged or imprisoned in the first place, yet now some of those
charges--they were freed and out of the country--have been
restored.
And other Christian pastors, including Hassan Abdelrahim
Tawor and Kowa Shamal, are currently in prison facing similar
charges related to their faith. The continued presence of
restrictive laws and the specter of heavy-handed government
action against individuals of faith casts a pall over religious
life in that country.
And I mention Sudan precisely because I genuinely hoped
that this was a country that was interested in making changes
and could come off the CPC list. We had received some
encouraging signals from key government officials, but we have
yet to see the hoped-for improvements actualize. We must
continue to press for reforms in all CPC countries, Sudan
included.
Now, Chairman Smith, I know of your keen interest in China,
another CPC. In August 2015, we went to China to raise
important concerns. We actually saw some positive signs in some
geographic areas of the country, where more unregistered
churches were allowed to function, more religious entities were
allowed to engage in providing social services.
I wish that we had been able to lift those up and to talk
about them, but in other areas of the country--to talk about
them even more than we did as indicative of changes in China.
But, in other areas of the country, restrictions were far more
than norm and far greater.
Repression of Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong continues
unabated. Restrictions on Uyghur Muslims have increased.
Chinese officials have sought to politicize theology in state-
sanctioned churches by compelling modifications of Christian
teachings to conform to socialism.
We were shocked when authorities detained human rights
lawyer Zhang Kai and several other church leaders as they were
preparing to meet with me about the tearing down of crosses in
Wenzhou. I was appreciative of your calls, congressional calls,
for their release and know similar calls that emanated from
many with whom we work in the international community. They
were finally released. The campaign to end, the campaign to
destroy crosses appears to have stopped for the moment, but, as
we know, too many others remain in prison for daring to stand
up for their right to practice their relation.
During the most recent U.S.-China Strategic and Economic
Dialogue, Secretary Kerry vigorously raised our concerns about
growing restrictions on the exercise of religion and
expression, particularly those that target lawyers, religious
adherents, and civil society leaders.
One potentially encouraging area is Vietnam. Since I was
last here, we have engaged extensively with Vietnamese
authorities to bring about needed changes in their proposed
draft law on religion and belief. And I hope we can discuss
this further in the discussion period.
We have moved to expand the work of the International
Contact Group on Freedom of Religion and Belief, which we
helped to launch last year with my Canadian counterpart, former
Ambassador for Religious Freedom Andrew Bennett. The Contact
Group met just last month in a meeting here in Washington that
we hosted. Representatives of the 16 countries and the European
Union attended, working together to map out ways we can work
together more effectively.
With increased funding from Congress, we are significantly
expanding our foreign assistance programs. Since the creation
of the IRF office, we have devoted tens of millions of dollars
to programs that contribute to the promotion of religious
freedom.
It is a deeply encouraging vote of confidence that you have
appropriated--the Congress has appropriated additional funds in
fiscal year 2015 and 2016. This will allow us to expand core
religious freedom programs while starting new programs that
will strengthen rule of law to protect and support the exercise
of religious freedom and address issues of violent extremism in
countries like Nigeria, like the CAR, Bangladesh, provide
further emergency assistance to individuals mistreated for
their beliefs, and help countries to live up to the goals of
U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 1618 by combating
religious intolerance in ways that simultaneously advance
freedom of expression and freedom of religion.
Over the past year, we have significantly expanded
religious freedom training programs both for other countries
across the globe and for our own staff from Embassies all
across the globe.
More specifically, we have launched region-specific
training sessions at Foreign Service Institute facilities
around the world to help give our officers a clear
understanding of what religious freedom entails, why it matters
in the broad context of U.S. foreign policy, and how most
effectively to promote those rights from an Embassy or
consulate. We have received extraordinarily positive feedback
from the nearly 130 State Department staff who have
participated in these training sessions.
At the same time, we also continue to offer the semiannual
4-day religion and foreign policy course that we run in
conjunction with the Secretary's Office for Religion and Global
Affairs at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington.
Finally, congressional funding is making it possible to
significantly expand the Office of International Religious
Freedom and our work. In addition to Special Advisor Knox
Thames and myself--Mr. Thames sits behind me today--the office
currently has now 23 full-time staff, and we have plans to hire
several more very soon.
This makes it possible to expand the scope of our work to
better address not only our regional and country-specific work
but to develop teams on urgent issues, such as protecting
religious minorities in the Middle East--and Knox Thames has
done an extraordinary job on that and is the coordinator of the
upcoming conference in July--the relationship between
countering violent extremism and religious freedom; combating
blasphemy and apostasy laws, an issue that is a major priority
for us; and focusing on restrictive registration regimes.
I actually am attaching and submitting a study on this
latter issue of restrictive registration regimes that was
commissioned by us this year.
I welcome any questions that you might have. And, again, I
thank you for your passionate attention to religious freedom
concerns across the globe. You are a vital and indispensable
partner in our work.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Saperstein follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Thank you so much, Ambassador Saperstein.
Because he has to go, but will come back, I would to yield
to Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your
accommodation.
Ambassador, thank you for your testimony.
So let me, I guess, pick up on one particular item. And, I
guess, one of the concerns I had--you said there were 130 State
Department employees that had participated in the training?
Ambassador Saperstein. Yes.
Mr. Meadows. Out of what universe? I mean, that sounds like
a small number compared to----
Ambassador Saperstein. Well, at any given time, there are
about 190 people, probably a few more, actually, because
consulates sometimes have their own people, who have direct
responsibility for----
Mr. Meadows. So you were saying 130 of the 190 that have
the direct responsibility----
Ambassador Saperstein. That is right.
Mr. Meadows [continuing]. Participating?
Ambassador Saperstein. They are the ones who came to our
training----
Mr. Meadows. Oh, okay. All right. Well, that is a more
significant number.
Ambassador Saperstein [continuing]. At the Foreign Service
Institute. Then, a larger number of people who don't have those
responsibilities participate in those training sessions, as
well.
Mr. Meadows. All right.
After much, I guess, encouragement, we had a genocide
designation that was made. And so, as I see that designation
that has been made, I guess, Ambassador, my question is, what
is next? We made the designation, so where is the action that
would follow that? And please be specific, if you can.
Ambassador Saperstein. Let me try my best to run through
what the different pieces of this are.
First, we hope to improve the condition of those--it is
clear ISIL is not going to be removed tomorrow or the next day
or next week or next month. The displaced populations are going
to be there for a while, so the quality of life for them has to
be improved. And we have seen significant increases in our
funding for those----
Mr. Meadows. Well, we know we have done our part. I guess
what I am asking is when are we going to see action on your
part in a tangible way. I mean----
Ambassador Saperstein. Well, let me----
Mr. Meadows [continuing]. Because I am a fiscal
conservative and I am willing to sign on because this is a
priority for me. But yet, at the same time, if I continue to
spend the American taxpayer dollars and no result comes from
it, Ambassador, that needs to be a message that goes back to
the administration, that----
Ambassador Saperstein. So let me run--and I know you have
to leave. I will do it as quickly as I can, but----
Mr. Meadows. No, we are good.
Ambassador Saperstein [continuing]. Let me just run through
it.
I believe that the allocation of the recent additional 160-
whatever-it-was million dollars that we did was a reallocation
within our budget, not----
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ambassador Saperstein [continuing]. An additional
allocation of Congress on that. So that is number one.
Number two, there has to be accountability. I talked about
the atrocities accountability pieces that we are doing of
identifying where the sites are, helping to train people on the
ground in how to protect those sites, both in the military when
they move in and the actual minority communities, about what
they can do to protect those sites.
Third, people need to move back with security. And, in
order to have security, the minority groups need to know that
their own defense, local defense forces will be integrated into
whatever system is protecting them. And we have now seen that
there is additional training for those local defense forces
that--and this is a new development since the genocide
designation was made. Training of those defense forces is part
of our training in general here. So that is another piece of
what has to be done.
Fourth, I talked about the transitional justice piece. We
are going to have people go home to people who took over their
homes, their businesses. They may have invested in those. Some
were complicit in ISIL's activities; some were not. They were
just opportunistic. We have worked with the Iraqi Government on
this. They have taken steps in terms of ensuring title remains
with the people who have fled. But there needs to be a
reconciliation process of how to do this. And we are working
with the U.N. and others in order to begin to do that, and with
NGOs who are specialized in mediation from prior places that
atrocities have taken place.
We have leaned very hard in terms of working closely with
Prime Minister Abadi, who has said he wants to change the
governance structure to ensure minorities have a greater role
in governance. They need to believe they can help shape the
future of the country, and we are working on that piece, as
well.
And then, of course, the central problem, which will be a
partnership between Congress and the State Department, will be
the economic rebuilding of those areas. And there are a number
of proposals that are before us in our program areas to do
pilot runs on some approaches to that economic rebuilding.
Mr. Meadows. Well, Ambassador, with all due respect, some
of those things that you have just mentioned had nothing to do
with the genocide designation. I mean, they may be an offshoot
of that, but their causal effect was not the genocide
designation. Those were things that were white papers, things
that we were already embarking on.
And so I guess my question becomes, at what point in the
process, in the spectrum of a designation gets made, we have
all of these great things--and I am not suggesting that none
of--all of those are great things that we should be doing.
So I guess what I am saying is, for the American people,
when we are really talking about affecting those who have been
displaced----
Ambassador Saperstein. So two brief points.
Mr. Meadows. Okay.
Ambassador Saperstein. Here. I may not have been clear.
Everything I talked about, I was talking about directly related
to the minority communities who have been displaced and what is
necessary to get them back to their----
Mr. Meadows. And those have happened since we made the
genocide designation?
Ambassador Saperstein. Well, that would be my second point.
Mr. Meadows. That was my point.
Ambassador Saperstein. That would be my second point.
Mr. Meadows. Okay.
Ambassador Saperstein. Clearly, I believe and I believe our
Nation should be proud of the fact that we were doing
significant amounts of things, including our military action,
the coalition of----
Mr. Meadows. I agree.
Ambassador Saperstein.--60 countries to help, that we would
have done had we declared genocide at the very beginning of
this, and we acted accordingly to that. So the fact that we
were already doing many of these things and we had plans
already in motion even before it and we stepped up the
implementation of that shouldn't be the judgment of whether
genocide mattered.
The question is: What are we doing? Are we acting
appropriately to a situation in which genocidal activity has
been taking place? And all of this, what we did before and what
we have done subsequently, I think paints a robust picture.
Mr. Meadows. All right.
So, with that robust picture, I will ask my last question.
There is a thought or at least a hypothesis out there that it
took so long to get the genocide designation that any followup
that we are doing is more to comply with that and, in short,
can be some window dressing. And that is not something that I
am putting forth. I am just saying that that is something that
I hear continually from my constituents and those that are
concerned about this particular issue.
So, as we look at that, how do we define success in terms
of really addressing the atrocities that continue and have gone
on and hopefully will stop soon? How do we define success where
we are not judging it in terms of the number of people who have
participated in a training program or the number of people that
are doing this? How do we do that, Ambassador, so that the next
time I vote for additional funding I am supported in that?
Ambassador Saperstein. I will answer that directly. Give me
20 seconds to make one other point.
The conference that we are holding----
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ambassador Saperstein [continuing]. It was part of a
sequence of conferences at the U.N. Security Council, then in
Paris, that led to an action plan but without commitments from
countries of what to do.
After the genocide designation, we moved--the next
conference got delayed 6 months--we moved immediately to
contact all the sponsors--France, Spain, Jordan--to say, let us
have an intermediary conference that will be focused entirely
on international commitments. That is a direct result of the--
--
Mr. Meadows. Thank you. That is helpful.
Ambassador Saperstein. So the test for me is, does it
protect these minorities, A?
And I believe, when I saw our intervention on Mount Sinjar,
when I saw our intervention in the Khabur River in the north of
Syria here where ISIL was pushed out of areas and prevented
from engaging in more genocidal activity because of our
intervention, in that, with the extraordinary help of the KRG,
there are safety and protection for these people. That is one
thing.
Secondly, can they go back safely, and do they have a
chance to really rebuild and to restore these great, historic
communities that were part of the marvelous, diverse tapestry
of life in this region?
And all of those pieces I have talked about are what we
think the indispensable pieces are. And I gave you a roadmap as
to where we are. Some are not as far along as they need to be,
and we are pushing very hard to ensure that they are. Some we
are making significant progress on.
But those, to me, are the test. Can they remain safely in
place at a quality of life that they will not feel their only
option is to flee so that those who want to go home can? And
then can they return back with justice, with security, and with
opportunity, both economic opportunity and opportunity to shape
the future of their country? And those, to me, should be the
ultimate test.
I think we are making progress, but the world community has
a lot farther to go still into making that a reality.
Mr. Meadows. Well, I thank you for that direct answer. It
is encouraging. We will certainly be following up.
I hold you in very high regard, as I do your staff.
Obviously, there are times where competing agendas take place
here in this city. And so the message that I would like you to
convey is this is one that should be a top priority. It is
foundational of who we are, as freedom-loving Americans, and so
it should be our top priority. And, as that, with the
chairman's leadership, we are going to continue to follow up.
And so that message needs to be taken back, if you would do
that for me, Ambassador.
Ambassador Saperstein. I give you my word that I will at
the highest levels, Mr. Meadows.
And you should be assured about one thing. It may have
taken us a long time to actually get the actual evidence--
because we didn't have access this to areas that ISIL
controlled--to get sufficient evidence. And a lot of people
from the Hill and from the NGO community partnered with us in
getting that evidence. Nobody pushed that process harder within
the State Department to say, ``I have to get to the legal
standard, and this is an absolute priority for me'' than did
the Secretary. He deeply believed that we had a responsibility
to make this determination once we were able to accumulate the
evidence. He drove it. I would like to say that he drove it----
Mr. Meadows. Well----
Ambassador Saperstein [continuing]. Here and made sure that
it happened. And I know it took longer than others would have
wanted, including the Secretary, but he felt he had to meet the
legal standard, and the second he did, he moved to make it
public.
Mr. Meadows. Well, if you would please pass along, if it
doesn't hurt him politically, my appreciation and, certainly,
kudos to him.
And I will yield back.
I have to run. We will be monitoring this, and I will be
back.
Ambassador Saperstein. I look forward to working with you.
Mr. Meadows. All right. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Meadows, thank you very much.
And, Ambassador, a couple of questions.
First, when Secretary of State John Kerry made his
designation, he said, ``In my judgment''--and then he singled
out the Shia, Yazidis, and the Christians. If that could be
further delineated for this subcommittee, exactly--does that
mean the entire government now, the administration, the U.S.
Government made that? Or was it a Secretary of State's judgment
call? Is there any difference between the two?
And so the definition of ``genocide,'' its legal and moral
implications--what are the legal implications? What are the
moral implications?
I know what it took to get there, because I was part of
that process as well. My first hearing on genocide against
Christians was 3 years ago in this room. And we heard from a
number of NGOs who were almost bitter with how there was a
looking askance by the administration. We had an administration
witness who kept saying, ``Let me take back that''--because
they raised all of these specific instances of what can only be
construed as a genocidal series of acts--``Let me get back to
you'' with, what that was all about. There was seemingly a lack
of understanding, and I found it appalling, frankly.
But we are here now. Legal and moral implications?
And, again, when the Secretary said that, is that for
Obama, for the Vice President, for everybody in the
administration?
Ambassador Saperstein. First, the delay in doing this was a
matter of the legal definition. The functional part of it, from
the moment that we mobilized those 60 countries to intervene to
protect the Yazidi population on Mount Sinjar, we had been
acting as though these were crimes against humanity. Both the
President and the Secretary used language about potential
genocides if we don't stop it, et cetera, here.
So we acted from the very beginning, as I said, in the
standard we would have had we declared genocide. And the truth
is we have been acting more forcefully than we did in other
places where we did declare that there was genocide happening
here, and we did from the very beginning.
This was the Secretary's determination. He is charged to
make a determination. As he indicated, ultimately, there is his
sense of the legal criteria on which he made his determination
about genocide.
In terms of criminal responsibility for it, that will be
done in a court, in international courts. And much of the work
we are doing about protecting these sites and the evidence is
aimed at being able to have accountability in either Iraqi
courts or international courts on these issues.
So, that is a very important piece of this, but it is the
Secretary's determination, as the Secretary, that has always
been the standard that we used.
Mr. Smith. I say that because, Ambassador, after Colin
Powell made his designation on Sudan, there was a whole
backstory about how it really doesn't matter, it doesn't bind
the U.S. Government to taking any certain actions, and we heard
that that kind of dialogue may be going on at the State
Department. I certainly hope it wasn't.
Ambassador Saperstein. I am pushing the envelope here about
what I am----
Mr. Smith. Okay.
Ambassador Saperstein [continuing]. About my own clarity on
this. It is----
Mr. Smith. I am not questioning your clarity.
Ambassador Saperstein. It is my understanding that that
standard actually still holds. In other words, the United
States Government did not feel that their legal obligation to
act under the genocide treaty, as adopted and ratified by the
United States Senate, legally compelled them to do any
particular thing at that time. I think that has always been the
standard of our legal interpretation.
What the Secretary believed was, even before the
designation, where we see crimes against humanity, where we see
a potential genocide, we have a moral obligation to act. That
was President Obama's position. It was Secretary Kerry's
position. It was their justification for why we intervened at
Mount Sinjar with the Yazidi crisis. It was not because we felt
legally there was an obligation to act under the genocide
treaty that was binding on the United States, but in terms of
our national interests, our national values, and our moral
responsibility, we had an obligation to act.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask you whether or not the administration
is seriously considering, and your office perhaps encouraging
this, that a P-2 designation be made so that those who are
victims of genocide are processed expeditiously.
Right now, we look at the numbers--and we asked for them
from the Congressional Research Service--and the numbers of
Syrian Christians admitted in fiscal year 2015 was 1.7 percent,
and, so far, as of April 30, it was \2/10\ of 1 percent who
have gotten processed and have come here to the United States.
And, it is almost as if--and we have heard from experts the
difficulty of Christians--the UNHCR, very often under their
auspices, it is very hard to get processed there. I had a
series of hearings on the refugees' side of it last year, and
Anne Richard testified and raised all of these issues in
September with PRM and many others, that if we don't actively
look for now what are the victims of genocide, we won't find
them.
And I wonder if your office is fully integrated in working
with PRM and the others to make sure that that happens. We have
to go find these people. They are fearful, one, of having left.
Some do stay in-country. CRS backs that up, too, that some fear
that they have to stay as IDPs. But once they do want to come
and emigrate, they don't have a meaningful way to get from
there to here. P-2 would help that.
Ambassador Saperstein. It is my--again, I think you have
conveyed that; I will continue to convey that. Anne Richard's
PRM would be the appropriate people to go into detail.
Just a couple of quick points on this.
Many refugees are not in camps. That is particularly true
of Christian refugees. Many other refugees, including Muslim
refugees, are in various host communities, both in the KRG, in
Lebanon, in Jordan, and other places, as well here. So there is
a need to reach these people, but UNHCR--and I saw in this my
visit to their central regional operations in Thailand--they
are very used to reaching out into other communities and
actually have developed a fairly good system of doing that, and
so have we.
I understand--I hope I am correct on this--that we are now
opening an operation in Erbil at our consulate that will allow
people to apply in-country under certain limited circumstances.
Again, the details you could get from the PRM or Iraq desk
people on this here.
I would remind us all that the percentage of people who
have come from Iraq, of the 120,000-plus people who have come
from Iraq that are minorities, almost all Christian, is 40
percent at this point. So you have a significant Christian
population.
It depends on who applies here. As I understand that, the
percentage of people receiving the visas who happen to be
Christian--and these are done by estimates that are not records
PRM or UNHCR keep. They don't keep records about religious
background. Everything is based on individual need of the
person. But those groups who do, my understanding is that it is
approximately the same percentage received as have applied for
these visas.
And there are increasingly rigorous efforts to reach people
where they are, outside the camps, in the host communities. In
some ways, it is not difficult, because when they go to host
communities, the Christian population, they end up affiliating
with churches there, and there is a network and system to get
word out through these.
So there has been progress made on that. And, again, you
can get the details from PRM.
Mr. Smith. Well, just for the record, the UNHCR does have
on its refugee resettlement form religion. And the numbers that
we have--again, we asked the Congressional Research Service for
their latest numbers--Christians in fiscal year 2016, 4;
Muslim, 23; Muslim Shiite, 17; Muslim Sunni, 1,675; Yazidi, 10;
and other, 7. So there is a----
Ambassador Saperstein. Is that of the people applied or
received?
Mr. Smith. These are received.
So the problem--UNHCR does have a--but the problem is, as
well, the UNHCR doesn't have access to these people, because in
the camps--this is why I think the prioritization of those on
the genocide designation declaration--I mean, the
prioritization has to be, like, on steroids in order to go find
them, make sure that they are being helped. And I----
Ambassador Saperstein. Is there a difference, Mr. Chairman,
between the percentage of people who apply and receive?
Mr. Smith. This is from Syria. It doesn't have a--at least
the numbers we have--we will look at it, but----
Ambassador Saperstein. It would be interesting to----
Mr. Smith. But, again, the end game, well, how do you
complete the loop, who actually gets here? Four. And it is not
very many.
Ambassador Saperstein. It is my understanding--again, PRM
can talk about this.
Mr. Smith. Yeah.
Ambassador Saperstein. It is my understanding that there
are vigorous efforts both by UNHCR and by our own refugee
people to reach people where they are. And that includes in the
host communities there and----
Mr. Smith. Well, on that very point--and we will be doing
another PRM hearing. But, again, just as recently as our last
hearing, which was in April, each of our witnesses and
especially the Knights of Columbus, Carl Anderson, made it very
clear--and they just did a fact-finding trip--that the food
stuffs, the medicines were not getting to the Christians. It
was almost like, they are not only at the bottom of the totem
pole, they are just--they just don't get it.
And he made the strongest admonishment imaginable, that
people will die, women will be sicker, particularly those who
are pregnant and at higher risk of malnutrition and stunting
for their children, unless the diocese and other faith-based
institutions are further prioritized.
And we have asked the administration, please, do that. And,
you know, I know that is not your, you know, primary focus, but
please----
Ambassador Saperstein. We share those concerns, and we
understand. We think that faith-based community has particular
expertise and particular access to these populations. They are
dealt with, as other groups are, based on their ability to do
it. I think that ability is significant, and I think that is
the way they should be treated, based on their ability to
achieve what has to be done. And you have given the
justification for why they are an effective partner in this
work.
Mr. Smith. Before I yield to my good friend Dana
Rohrabacher, Chairman Rohrabacher----
Ambassador Saperstein. Indeed.
Mr. Smith [continuing]. Very quickly, a couple of very,
very strong concerns. I chair the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China. I have chaired 60 hearings on Chinese
rights abuses. I was just there with two of my staff members,
gave a major speech on human rights in Shanghai, at NYU-
Shanghai, just in February, after 7 years of not being able to
get a visa.
My point and concern is, under Xi Jinping, the sinofication
of religion, just like the draft law on NGOs, is a further
tightening, the likes of which I haven't seen. I have been in
Congress 36 years. There is an aggressive move to decapitate
all faiths--Tibetan Muslims, Muslim Uyghurs, and, of course,
Christians, even part of the officially recognized church--this
sinofication, a new rubric under which he has put this.
We had a hearing just a few weeks ago on torture in China.
And, of course, the U.N. has singled out China as an egregious
violator on torture. Twenty years ago, in this room, we heard
from Palden Gyatso, a Buddhist who couldn't even get into
Rayburn--you remember that hearing--couldn't even get into
Rayburn because he brought in the implements of--cattle prods
that were being used against him and others. Horrible, horrible
torture.
It has gotten worse. We just heard from Golog Jigme, who
talked about the torture chair--the ``tiger chair,'' which is a
torture chair, and said, increasingly, they are using it
against people of faith, particularly Buddhists, Tibetans,
Christians, and Falun Gong.
And our President, in my humble opinion, has not raised
these issues--you have, but at the highest level, Xi Jinping to
Obama and back--have not raised these in a way that says there
will be real-world consequences if you continue torturing and
maltreating people of faith.
China is in a race to the bottom with North Korea. We all
know it. It is getting worse. It is a CPC country, as it has
been from day one. But I would hope that there would be a
ratcheted-up effort to say to China: Stop it.
I have never seen anything like it. When he went into
detail, as did our other witnesses, about torture in China and
explained how this chair, this tiger chair, just is an
excruciating implement of torture.
So please convey that and----
Ambassador Saperstein. I truly will.
And I will say again--that is one of the reasons I address
the issue of sinofication in my testimony here. We were very
disappointed that the conference on religion that they had,
which we had hoped might show some progress, instead focused on
this idea of the sinofication of religion, and that was in
terms of the message of President Xi. And we hope there will be
a significant change in that.
I will say, as I did in my testimony, that Secretary Kerry
was particularly strong at the seed dialogue that took place
just a couple of weeks ago, particularly strong in speaking out
about the violations of religious freedom. It was a very strong
message and equally so on the broader human rights agenda. So
the kind of disappointment, I think, and impatience for
improvements in human rights that you have expressed I believe
was expressed quite strongly by the Secretary.
Mr. Smith. My last question--I have a dozen, but I will
submit the rest for the record--before going again to Dana.
Ambassador Saperstein. Please.
Mr. Smith. On Vietnam. Four times, the Congress has passed
my bill, called the Vietnam Human Rights Act.
Ambassador Saperstein. Uh-huh.
Mr. Smith. Four times, it got over to the Senate, beginning
in 2004. Secretary Kerry put a hold on it, and it never--it set
benchmarks, particularly on religious freedom, that could be
achieved, and it froze, did not eliminate, froze any additional
increases in foreign aid, which could be a great lever for us
to use. It is pending here now again here in the House, but
four times, four and 0. The Senate never even got a vote on it.
I have been to Vietnam many times, like you, and I am glad,
you know, you have raised those issues so strongly. But,
please, Vietnam should be a CPC.
I remember when John Hanford, right as the bilateral trade
agreement was being negotiated, thought that it would be a
great carrot--former Ambassador-at-Large John Hanford--to take
Vietnam off the CPC list, in the hopes--and it was a hope. He
had deliverables that he thought they were going to provide.
They made all kinds of noise that they were going to change the
registration agreements. I went to Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and
Hue, met with 60 different religious leaders while I was there,
and government people. Everyone was saying, ``This could be the
beginning. We are on the precipice of real reform.'' As soon as
they got bilateral trade, they severed any kind of thought
about human rights adherence and went, again, right back into
the repression.
I fear we are making that same mistake now. The Commission
has made a recommendation for seven countries that they truly
believe should be on the CPC list. You are right; anytime you
want to make that designation, you are legally authorized to do
so. The ones that are listed all ought to be on there, but
Vietnam, I would put exclamation points behind it. Because they
got away with murder when they got off of that list, because
they reverted right back to the old ways.
The people who signed Bloc 8406, a beautiful manifesto on
human rights, one by one were hunted down and thrown into
prison, including many of the people that I met with. Father Ly
got rearrested. Now he has been out again, but he has been so
hurt and damaged by their cruelty that they probably were
fearful he would die while being incarcerated.
So Vietnam has to be on that list.
Finally, before President Obama made his trip--and we talk
about gun control. When we lift a lethal arms embargo on a
communist dictatorship that cruelly mistreats its people, what
kind of background check do we do on the communist dictatorship
as they are handing out whatever it is that we end up selling
to Vietnam? To me, that is an egregious mistake that was made
by the administration without conditionality.
We had Mrs. Vu, Nguyen Van Dai's wife, testify here. You
might have met with her when she was here. Her husband, who I
first met in 2005 in Hanoi defending Christians and others, a
great human rights defender, a lawyer, a great lawyer, he is
back in prison. After 4 years before in prison, 4 under House
arrest, he is back in. He is not out.
We begged the President to raise his case by name in-
country and say, ``You have to let him go.'' We did it with
Natan Sharansky. We did it with Soviet Jews, as you know,
because we worked together so strongly on that. When I got
elected in 1980 and my first trip was to the Soviet Union on
behalf of Soviet Jews, we always had lists and we always got
people out. And now Nguyen Van Dai is back in prison, and I am
just baffled by it.
So please put them on the CPC list.
Ambassador Saperstein. I also will convey that.
Just one word on Vietnam. They are writing a new
comprehensive law. There will be two benchmarks. One, does the
law makes significant improvements?
In the various iterations of the bill, there have been some
significant improvements, not enough to have the kind of
minimally robust religious freedom that is necessary, but they
are moving, in terms of the law, in a very positive direction.
Now, until the law is implemented, it could be reversed,
those gains could be lost. But if it continues in that
direction, that will be one benchmark for us. The second
benchmark is will it actually change anything on this ground
and will it be implemented.
But, because the new law is coming here, let's continue to
communicate on that together. And the second that law is done,
we ought to have a hearing just on that to talk about how that
law has met the international obligations of Vietnam and what
the implications of the law will be.
Right now, we are encouraged by what we are seeing, but, in
the end, it is only the final product that really matters, and
will it be implemented. There are lots of promises in
constitutions all across the world about freedom of religion.
What, in real life, is the experience of people?
We have heard, unlike what you were talking about where
people said, well, do this because it will be better, we are
hearing real improvements on the ground in many of the areas of
the country right now. And that is encouraging to us, but what
matters is what the law finally says and how it is implemented.
And we want to work with this committee----
Mr. Smith. I appreciate that.
Ambassador Saperstein [continuing]. To judge that and
assess that when it happens.
Mr. Smith. I absolutely agree, but I would also add a note
of caution. Yogi Berra once said, ``It's deja vu all over
again.'' This looks like a carbon-copy repeat of what they did
during the bilateral agreement. There was great hope,
particularly among the religious communities, many of whom
surfaced themselves and went from underground to above ground,
only to be----
Ambassador Saperstein. Here, we will be able to judge here.
So let's take a good look at that when----
Mr. Smith. Chairman Rohrabacher?
Thank you very much.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And let me again express my appreciation to Chairman Smith
for the dedication that he has. Very few Members are willing to
give up a couple hours on the breakaway day to try to strike a
blow for freedom but also to give hope to people throughout the
world that we still do have a high standard when it comes to
human rights and especially to freedom of religion.
Ambassador Saperstein. Mr. Rohrabacher, I see quite
evidently you are one of those people, and thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, not so, because after I get done, I
will have to run out and catch my airplane to be with my family
in California.
If you would indulge me, one thing, a story. And years ago,
a lot of people know that I was Ronald Reagan's speechwriter in
the White House. And there was a fellow named Natan Sharansky,
who is now in Israel because he got out, but, at that time,
Natan Sharansky was a political prisoner in Russia, and he was
in the Gulag. And we all knew about him, and we tried to get as
much attention forced in that direction. He became a hero when
he refused to recant public statements he had made saying that
Russia was repressing not only the Jews but the rest of their
citizens. And he refused to sign off on that, and so they kept
him in the Gulag.
And we knew about that in the White House, and we knew he
was there suffering. And then he was freed. We traded a spy for
him. We crossed that bridge over in Berlin, I guess, and I
would say we got a saint and they got the devil. So, anyway, we
were very pleased with that.
About a week later, Sharansky ended up at the White House,
meeting with President Reagan. And when he went in to meet with
President Reagan, he came out, and there was an area there in
the White House where someone who just met with the President
can talk to the reporters and we can all see it inside our
various offices. And speechwriters were all tuned in. He had
been one of our cause celebre that we were trying to help
during those years.
And they asked him, well, what did you say to President
Reagan? And he said, well, I told him the most important thing
was don't tone down your speeches. Now, you can imagine how the
speechwriters felt about that. Champagne bottles were out,
celebrating. Now we had this heroic world figure saying, don't
tone down your speeches, Ronald Reagan.
Well, what happened is, of course--they said, well, why is
that? And he said, well, I reminded the President that when I
was at my bottommost darkest part of my incarceration, I was
being kept there in basically a dungeon and with no contact
except one person came in and gave me my meals. And someone,
when they gave him his meals, had smuggled a piece of paper to
him, and on that paper on his meals was written, ``The
President of the United States has just called the Soviet Union
an evil empire.''
And he said, when I knew that the President of the United
States understood that and was willing to speak out to the
world and say that, I knew there was hope for me. So we have to
understand, when we speak with a loud voice, there are people--
not just hopefully the jailers, but the people inside will be
given hope as well.
Quite frankly, when you mentioned--and I just would be very
frank with you. When you talked about how they are rewriting
this law in Vietnam, that did not give me hope. Vietnam is a
country that does not believe in the rule of law. They don't
have an independent court system in Vietnam. They don't really
have a system of government that is elected and, thus, has a
legal obligation to the people.
The laws that were the most restrictive on government and
restricting whatever oppression could happen among the people
during the Cold War, do you know what that--it was the Russian
Constitution. The Constitution of the Soviet Union had every
protection in it. It meant nothing. Zero.
And I am afraid in Vietnam they are going to have to prove
it to us. I spent some time there, back in 1969, and I actually
was up with some Montagnard tribesmen up in the central
Highlands. And do you know what is happening to the
mountaineers today? They have been converted to--Chris, they
have been converted to Christianity. They are actually
Evangelicals more than Catholics. And they are being severely
repressed now.
And I hope what we are doing gives them a sense of hope
that we have not forgotten them. And it is in Vietnam's
interest to work with us now, so let's make sure we reach out.
And Russia came to a point where the Soviet Union could
work with us and now--and then to Russia, I notice that there
is one area that Jehovah's Witnesses are now facing some
problems. But I have been in and out of Moscow and Russia a
number of times, and one thing that really has struck me is
that they have almost total freedom of religion. I have met
with the Mormons, the Catholics, the Orthodox, the Baptists. I
have met with all of them, and none of them had any complaints.
What a great achievement that is over--and, by the way, is also
the head rabbi in Moscow. What a great achievement that is, as
compared to the time when a paper was smuggled to a Jewish
prisoner and gave him hope.
So I am not quite as worried about Russia. We have to make
sure they understand we are watching.
But what really is upsetting to me about what the
administration, perhaps what your job is and what I am worried
about--and Representative Smith has already raised that--and
that is we are not just in a world where people are being
persecuted for their faith, we live in a world today where
there is genocide going on, targeting people for their faith,
and heinous acts of genocide against people simply for their
religious convictions, and especially in the Christians and
Yazidis in these countries.
Now, I have a bill, H.R. 4017. It has not passed. The bill
that we passed in Congress was a sense of the House, a
congressional resolution that did not have--it is a sense of
Congress that this is what should happen, that there should be
priorities given to people who are targets of genocide.
We thought that that fact that the House had expressed
that, the sense of the House has been expressed, that maybe we
would see something on the executive side of this equation.
And, as Chairman Smith has just pointed out, it is not
happening, when you have four Christians and thousands of
Muslims coming into this country on a refugee or immigrant
status from that very same country and area that we said,
please, give priority to the people who are being targeted for
genocide. This is totally unacceptable, and it indicates that
the administration isn't listening. I would hope that you take
advantage of the bully pulpit.
I will tell you, there were a number of times inside the
White House when I worked there, I raised holy hell about
things. No one on the outside knew I was raising holy hell
about this or that. And I hope that behind the scenes--I don't
expect you to say anything bad about your boss, but at least we
expect you to raise holy hell behind the scenes to make sure
that we are doing what is right and that it is real. It is not
just waiting for them to rewrite the law or something like
that.
So, please, go right ahead.
Ambassador Saperstein. Well, I guess if any office should
raise holy hell, it is the religious freedom office.
A few quick responses.
On your last point, I think right before you came in, I do
want to remind you--I understand and will convey exactly the
concerns that have been expressed here on this issue. I do want
to remind you, in Iraq, 127,000 refugees have come in, 40
percent of them are minorities, almost all Christian, a
significant number, because that is the people who have
applied.
If you remember, in Syria, many of the minority communities
were in areas controlled by the government, and the government,
before the civil war began, had been somewhat protective of
those minority communities. They chose not to flee until the
fighting came to those areas. So they were late into the
displaced camps, they were late into the refugee situation, et
cetera.
It is my understanding--I'll say it again--that the
percentage of people who have been given refugee status
approximate the percentage of people who have applied. That is
my understanding. Again, you would have to have PRM in to see
about that.
We have opened up now a facility in Lebanon that will help
reach the Christians as well as others in Lebanon, but a high
percentage went to Lebanon from the Christian communities. We
have opened up a facility there. We have opened up a facility
at Erbil that will be able to accommodate those under
particular circumstances, including some of the things I think
you are alluding to, et cetera.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So let me be very clear about what you are
saying, because what you are saying is not in sync with what we
are talking about.
Ambassador Saperstein. Help me out.
Mr. Rohrabacher. You do not expect to have the percentage
of Christians who have applied to be the percentage who have
been granted the status and been permitted to come here. The
Christians and the Yazidis have been targeted for genocide. We
expect them to far exceed those who have not been targeted for
genocide.
I have visited camps where have you lots of Muslims coming
out of there. That is fine. I am not saying we should be anti-
Muslim. The fact is, however, those Muslims haven't been
targeted for genocide. A lot of them are leaving because there
is chaos. A lot of them are leaving because they don't have a
job and they really could actually do better elsewhere.
The Christians and the Yazidis, who are targeted for
genocide, should be far above how many----
Ambassador Saperstein. Mr. Rohrabacher, I appreciate that.
I understand clearly what you are saying here. I am not playing
games about words here, so please hear me for what I am saying
here.
PRM does not, as I understand it, keep track of the
religious identity of the people they help. The question is do
they meet the criteria and what is the need that they have.
People who, whatever their religion, people who have been
victimized by the kind of persecution is attendant to crimes
again humanity and genocide are exactly the kind of people who
would meet the criteria and get in. So the fact that they don't
call them Christians or whatever, they are the--but that
percentage of people on the Syria side of it--and Iraq was
different. That is why you have such a high percentage, way out
of proportion in terms of more people getting the visas than
their percentage of the population, way out of the proportion.
Because they were amongst the first displaced and the first to
apply, et cetera. It was a different pattern in Syria.
But, again, let me stop there on this because you really
should have the PRM people in to talk about this. This is
really in their bailiwick.
Very quickly, Natan Sharansky, one of the great heroes.
Congress was phenomenal about the Soviet Jewry movement and
about Natan Sharansky personally. He is a dear friend who I had
the opportunity before taking this position to work with very,
very closely on common concerns, and----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Ambassador--and then I will close off.
I am sorry if I am taking too much time, Chris.
Just to close off the Natan Sharansky story, and that is--
so he had basically said how the President's speech had given
him hope and et cetera. Well, a couple days later, and how we
speechwriters felt so good about that, a couple days later
there was a party for him at the Israeli Embassy. It was
mobbed, and I had been invited. And as he was, like--you know,
he was the hero of the day. And he is coming down these stairs,
surrounded by people. As you know, he is a short guy, so it is
sort of like a hole in the doughnut there. And so, anyway, he
gets down to the bottom. There is a huge crowd there. And I see
him looking through the crowd, and somebody is pointing over to
me. And he walks right through this crowd--and everybody wants
to talk to him--he walks right through the crowd, went up to
me, and he looks at me in my face and says, they tell me that
you write speeches for President Reagan. And I said, well, yes,
I do. And he said, I have often wondered who you are.
And, you know, there are people out there suffering----
Ambassador Saperstein. That is a very moving story.
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. And they know that somebody
there is going to be their spokesman. That is you. We know
someone is there----
Ambassador Saperstein. I have personally heard him tell the
same story that you have talked about. He really believes the
importance of what is said, which I will get to in just a
moment here.
I just returned not too long ago, a matter of weeks ago,
from the central Highlands in Vietnam.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Really?
Ambassador Saperstein. It is a more difficult situation
there. We do not hear the same messages. On the other hand, on
the other hand, you are seeing an enormous growth of the
Evangelical community, somewhat of the Catholic community. That
wouldn't have happened 20 years ago. It wouldn't have been
possible 20 years ago.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Ambassador Saperstein. It is an obvious point, but I would
comment on, even there, compared to what was, there has been
some improvement here.
For those who are victimized, for those who are harassed by
the police, for those who are in jail and are being physically
persecuted there, it may not feel different at all. But, at a
macro level, what we hear from people does show a positive
direction.
But, again, the test will be, what does the actual law--not
the promise in the constitution--the laws say, and how it is
implemented? And we said to the Vietnamese over and over again,
you have a chance to really make a profound difference.
And I am glad to come in and brief you on exactly what some
of----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Great.
Ambassador Saperstein [continuing]. Those changes are. I
think they would be fascinating for you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Did you go to Pleiku? In the Highlands,
did you go to Pleiku?
Ambassador Saperstein. In that area, yes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And where did you stay?
Ambassador Saperstein. Oh, I can't remember. I can picture
the hotel. I don't----
Mr. Rohrabacher. It was a hotel? Yeah. There is an old
French fort there that is----
Ambassador Saperstein. Ah. No, that was not where we were.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Anyway.
Ambassador Saperstein. Finally, I would just make this
obvious point. And I know my colleagues have been waiting
patiently here. I would just make this point. What Natan
Sharansky said to you about what it means for people there is
exactly why our report names prominent political prisoners of
conscience, religious/political prisoners of conscience, lifts
up their cases, lifts up their name.
When I travel to a country, almost every person that you
have named, Mr. Chairman, I have raised directly with the
ministry of justice, with the security ministry, with the
religious ministry, et cetera. We want the government to know
we are watching the plight of these people and are advocating
for their fair treatment and their freedom, and we lift up
their public voices.
It is why I went to that courtroom in Khartoum, where I saw
the two most prominent religious prisoners of conscience
released. I don't know whether our presence made a difference,
but they and their lawyers, I think, believed that it did. I
hear all the charges dropped here.
We will continue to lift up and put a human face on the
suffering of people who face religious discrimination and
persecution everywhere in the world. And we won't stop until
the freedom which their inherent right is a reality in their
lives.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.
I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
And, Ambassador Saperstein, thank you very much. And, as
you go, again, I do hope you will look at USCIRF's seven
recommendations. Because----
Ambassador Saperstein. You know----
Mr. Smith [continuing]. On Pakistan, the Ahmadiyya, the
Shia, the Hindus, the Christians. I remember being with you
when Minister Bhatti was----
Ambassador Saperstein. Exactly.
Mr. Smith [continuing]. Horribly gunned down.
Ambassador Saperstein. Yeah.
Mr. Smith. We were all in mourning. Pakistan needs to get
that designation and now.
Ambassador Saperstein. Every year, at the highest levels,
the USCIRF designation recommendations are reviewed. We go back
and review all of them in terms of providing information to the
Secretary for his decisions, and they are taken quite seriously
by the people over there.
I mentioned I have been to a number of the CPCs; even more
so, I have been to countries that are on the list of the
recommended CPCs.
Mr. Smith. But, again, before your arrival----
Ambassador Saperstein. So we really do take it very, very
seriously.
Mr. Smith. Before your arrival, designations, which are
supposed to be at least annual, were not happening. And Dr.
George had testified at a previous hearing I had and just rang
the alarm bell and said, where are the designations?
Ambassador Saperstein. Well, now we are not even waiting
for a yearly designation. Tajikistan was put on as soon as we
made the determination. And it was the Secretary who conveyed
that message personally about our concerns on their status
here.
I want to make it a more robust process here, so I share
those concerns. I said that in my confirmation hearing. And I
hope we are making noticeable improvement on this.
Mr. Smith. Thank you so much for your testimony, and thank
you for your exemplary service.
I would like to now welcome to the witness table Dr. Robert
George, who is McCormick professor of jurisprudence and
director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and
Institutions at Princeton University and formerly the chairman
of the--and just left as chairman of the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom.
He also has served on the President's Council on Bioethics
and as a Presidential appointee to the United States Commission
on Civil Rights. He has also served on UNESCO's World
Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and
Technology.
He is the author of several books and has had his work
published widely in academic journals. He is a regular
commentator on major media outlets and has testified before
this subcommittee and so many others in the House and Senate
for many years.
We will then hear from Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, who is the founder
and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. He
is also a former vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom.
Dr. Jasser is a first-generation American Muslim whose
parents fled the oppressive Ba'athist regime of Syria. He
earned his medical degree on a U.S. Navy scholarship, served 11
years in the United States Navy. Dr. Jasser has testified again
before Congress.
And I thank you both for your patience, especially with
those long votes.
But the floor is yours, Dr. George.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT P. GEORGE, PH.D., MCCORMICK PROFESSOR OF
JURISPRUDENCE, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY (FORMER CHAIRMAN, U.S.
COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM)
Mr. George. I have been up here so often, you would think I
would know where the ``talk'' button is. But I do want to thank
you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to appear, this time in
my capacity as a private citizen. As you noted, my term on the
Commission and as chairman of the Commission ended in May. It
was a great honor to serve on the Commission and as its
chairman.
And I thank the Congress for having the wisdom and the
foresight to create the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom, which does profoundly important work for the
country and for persecuted people and prisoners of conscience
abroad. I hope that, in the future, Congress will see fit to
extend the life of the Commission, as it did recently, and to
provide the Commission with the resources that it needs to do
the very important work, assisting you, that the Commission
does.
If I may say personally, Representative Smith, it is always
an honor to testify before you, most of all because of your
profound and heroic witness to human rights and especially to
religious freedom. You are an inspiration to those of us who
have been in the movement.
It is also a great honor--it always is--to testify at a
hearing with my great friend, Ambassador David Saperstein.
David Saperstein was a dedicated champion of religious liberty
long before he took up his present duties as our chief
spokesman, chief advocate within the administration as the
Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, and I
am grateful for all the work that David has done. In his
modesty, he kicks all the credit upstairs, but the reality is,
whenever something good happens on the religious freedom front,
something good comes out of the State Department, David
Saperstein's fingerprints are all over it. And try as he might
to try to hide those fingerprints, they are very easy to
discern.
I am delighted to be testifying along with my great friend
and colleague, with whom I served 4 years on the Commission,
Zuhdi Jasser. Zuhdi will provide, Mr. Chairman, some details
about the countries that have been in our focus. I am going to
provide some general observations.
First, the so-called secularization thesis, what
sociologists have for 30 or 40 years called the secularization
thesis--namely, the idea that, as modern life advances, as
modernity advances, religion retreats--is dead.
USCIRF's mandate, making policy recommendations to the
President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress about
violations of religious freedom abroad, was, I think, regarded
in some circles as not something that will be of lasting
importance because of belief in the secularization thesis. But
if modern events have proved anything, contemporary events have
proved anything, it is certainly that religion is, remains, and
will be into the future highly salient in people's lives and,
therefore, in our foreign policy and in foreign affairs.
World events have, in short, exploded the so-called
secularization thesis. As societies modernize, religion has not
lost its authority, and secular institutions have not achieved
the cultural, socioeconomic, and political supremacy that
secularization theory predicted. Facts on the ground refute
secularization's supposed inevitability. Religion remains
central in people's hearts and minds and, thus, in their self-
understandings and motivations. It continues to shape cultures
and the internal politics and foreign policy goals of nations.
My written testimony touches on Burma, China, and Iran in this
connection, but I could have noted many other nations, as well.
Secondly, why religious freedom? Well, if you don't get
religious freedom right, you don't get foreign policy right at
all. The secularization thesis' well-deserved repudiation
should reenforce religious freedom's importance and its
centrality in U.S. foreign policy. But I want to submit
something further, and that is that, if religious freedom
advocacy is left out of the equation, U.S. foreign policy
objectives, including promoting human rights, promoting
stability, promoting democracy, promoting economic well-being
and women's rights, will suffer.
My written testimony highlights India and Pakistan, in
particular, two different and historically hostile neighbors
that the U.S. seeks to engage--notes these countries on that
issue. But this engagement cannot succeed without dealing with
the roles of religion, religious freedom, and religious freedom
violations.
Third, the importance of conscience. As a conscience right,
religious freedom is more than merely the right to worship,
more than merely the right to pray in one's mosque or synagogue
or church or temple or around the dinner table or on one's
knees at bedtime. It is much more that that. It is the right to
follow one's own conscience on matters of faith and belief
wherever it leads so long as other people's rights and
essential principles of public order are respected.
That call to conscience includes rejecting belief in any
religion. Unbelievers have the right to religious freedom, too,
the right to their unbelief, the right not to believe. So
religious freedom is not just the right of religious people,
though it is certainly that; it is more than that. It is the
right even of unbelievers. It is a universal human right, a
right that all of us, as human, possess.
Now, let me turn to two issues that are central to the
right of religious freedom as a practical matter: First,
repealing blasphemy laws, the need to repeal blasphemy laws in
the nations that maintain and enforce them; and, second,
standing up for prisoners of conscience around the globe.
Blasphemy laws restrict the freedoms of religion and
expression, thereby violating two of the most basic civil
liberties and hallowed human rights and leading, in some cases,
to the destabilization of societies. Blasphemy is ``the act of
insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God.''
And you can imagine how such a thing, blasphemy understood or
defined in that way, can be abused and misused and exploited as
a tool of persecution. Pakistan, where blasphemy carries the
death penalty or life imprisonment, has more people sentenced
to jail or death for blasphemy than any other country.
And that is why I urge Congress to pass House Resolution
290, introduced by Representative Pitts and Representative
Jackson Lee, which calls for the global repeal of blasphemy
laws. I would ask you, Chairman Smith, I would ask the Congress
to prioritize the passage of that legislation. It is vitally
important that Congress signals that blasphemy laws must go,
that Congress signals its understanding that these laws are
used for no reason other than persecuting minorities and that
these laws are simply intolerable.
Prisoners of conscience are people who are in prison for
peacefully expressing their conscientiously held beliefs or
their unbelief or for their mere identity, although they have
neither used nor advocated violence. We must shine a light on
them and the laws and policies that led to their imprisonment,
and we need to hold the governments responsible for persecuting
them accountable. While quiet diplomacy has its place, public
inattention or public silence emboldens persecutors. Oppressive
nations must be prodded publicly, and not merely by backdoor
diplomacy, to protect their own people.
I want to mention here publicly a recently released
prisoner, Father Ly, for whom, Representative Smith, you have
tirelessly advocated. We must remain vigilant about the
conditions of his release and pay heed to the many others who
remain in detention in Vietnam, where he was held, or
elsewhere.
Fourth, the role of civil society. As intermediaries
between the state and individuals, civil society organizations
and institutions undergird successful and stable democracies
and, indeed, governments of all kinds.
In unstable and authoritarian countries, the government
controls and/or seeks to destroy the institutions of civil
society, what Burke called the ``little platoons,'' reducing
citizens, vested with God-given, fundamental rights independent
of government, to mere subjects from whom governments'
arbitrary hand grants or withholds at its pleasure mere
privileges.
Too many countries, including Russia and India, are
shrinking and even closing civil society's space because these
governments view civil society groups as threatening to their
authority. They seek to ensure that there are no authority
structures in society independent of government itself.
Our Government should, in response to these efforts,
vigorously support those groups, those organizations and
institutions and associations comprising civil society.
Fifth, and very importantly, the rise of non-state actors.
When the International Religious Freedom Act became law back in
1998, Congress was understandably and rightly focused on
governments as abusers of religious freedom. And there were
certainly plenty of them, and that remains true today, alas.
But because non-state actors are now among the primary and
worse perpetrators of egregious abuses, permitting our
Government to designate these non-state actors as severe
violators would both reflect reality, the new situation, the
new facts on the ground, and also allow Washington to better
engage the actual drivers of persecution.
So, Representative Smith, I want to commend your proposed
legislation, H.R. 1150, which includes this important measure.
And the more swiftly the Congress acts and the President makes
that law, the better off those who are fighting for religious
freedom across the globe and, of course, the victims for whom
we are fighting will be. It is important that this go through.
Sixth, genocide refugees and internally displaced persons.
Of course, Ambassador Saperstein has spoken to this in some
length. Confronting genocide and protecting refugees and
internally displaced persons are among today's top moral
challenges.
The hallmark of genocide is the intent to destroy a
national, racial, ethnic, or religious group. The Commission on
which I served until a few weeks ago called on the United
States Government last December to designate the Christians,
Yazidis, Shia, Turkmen, and Shabak, those communities of Iraq
and Syria, as victims of genocide by ISIL. We pushed very hard.
We also encouraged the United States and the international
community to bear witness to these crimes and additionally
designate genocide and crimes against humanity, whether those
are committed by ISIL, by the Assad regime, or by others. It
doesn't matter who the perps are, who the perpetrators are, and
it doesn't matter who the victims are. What matters is, where
genocide and crimes against humanity occur, they must be called
out as such and designated as such as swiftly and unequivocally
as possible.
While we certainly welcomed Secretary Kerry's March 2016
declaration that ISIL is responsible for genocide and we
commend all who assisted in bringing the Secretary to that
decision and announcement, we must do more. My written
testimony for today includes additional recommendations.
On refugees and internally displaced persons, the horrific
refugee crisis worsened this year, with religion factoring into
the worldwide humanitarian crisis, forcing literally millions
to flee, including 3.3 million people in Iraq; more than 11
million in Syria, the land of my own ancestry and, of course,
the land where Zuhdi Jasser comes from; more than 2.2 million
people in Nigeria; and about 1 million in the Central African
Republic. In Burma, 120,000 Rohingya Muslims and at least
100,000 Christians are internally displaced.
A record number of refugees are attempting to cross the
dangerous Mediterranean, seeking safe haven in Europe, as we
all know from watching television. With unprecedented numbers
forcibly displaced, many fleeing religious persecution or
religious-based violence, USCIRF issued recommendations,
included in my written testimony, recommendations for a
generous policy of receiving refugees, prioritized, as Mr.
Rohrabacher rightly urged, by vulnerability to the worst
offenses--murder, rape, torture, enslavement.
There is a widespread but false belief, one rooted in the
thought of some 19th century German philosophers, I believe,
figures like Hegel and Marx, that we can rely on history to
produce justice in the long run, that history will inevitably
move in the direction of moral progress, that everything will
certainly work out all right in the end.
But this view ignores the radical contingency of human
affairs and the reality of human freedom. History considered as
some sort of quasi-personal or super-personal force will not
guarantee religious liberty or justice of any kind for all or
for anyone. If liberty and justice are to prevail, it will
require the free choices, determination, dedication, and
courage of men and women, flesh-and-blood human beings,
citizens, and statesmen.
Victory is not guaranteed. History does not give us a
promise of everything coming out all right in the end, not in
the world of human affairs. Victory for human rights and for
justice is not foreordained, it is not in the cards. But it is
possible. The possibility of progress toward religious freedom
and the securing of other fundamental human rights is in our
hands and in the hands of our fellow citizens.
Congress has a vital role to play, as does the executive
branch, as do activists, faith communities, civil society
groups, everyone who is willing to lend a hand and put a
shoulder to the wheel. So let us here, to use Lincoln's phrase,
highly resolve to turn the possibility of progress for
religious liberty into reality.
[The prepared statement of Mr. George follows:]
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----------
Mr. Smith. Dr. George, thank you very much for that very
eloquent statement, comments. And thank you for your leadership
at the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom. It
has been extraordinary. It has been incisive and decisive.
I read the reports. I am one of those who really actually
sits down and reads the reports that you proffer. They are
well-written and well-thought-out, and I thank you so much for
the gravitas that you have brought to that chairmanship.
Mr. George. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. I would like to now turn to Dr. Jasser.
STATEMENT OF M. ZUHDI JASSER, M.D., PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ISLAMIC
FORUM FOR DEMOCRACY (FORMER VICE-CHAIR, U.S. COMMISSION ON
INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM)
Dr. Jasser. Thank you, Chairman Smith and distinguished
subcommittee members, for holding this important hearing.
My name is Zuhdi Jasser. I am president of the American
Islamic Forum for Democracy. And, as you mentioned, I am here
as a former commissioner and vice-chair of USCIRF and am
testifying as a private citizen.
Let me first tell you how much of an honor it has been to
serve with Chairman George and the rest of the commissioners
and an honor it is to follow Ambassador Saperstein and become
his colleague on this Commission.
And I have to tell you, I also want to thank Senator
McConnell and Congress for this humbling opportunity, as the
son of immigrants from the most oppressive nation on the
planet, Syria, to have been able to serve you in this capacity
on USCIRF.
And I request that my written statement be submitted for
the record.
Mr. Smith. Without objection, so ordered.
Dr. Jasser. Thank you.
Before I start, let me also, as an American and humbly as a
Muslim during this holy month of Ramadan, give my deepest
condolences and prayers for the families and victims of the
massacre in Orlando and to our Nation in this difficult time.
On a global level, this hearing is especially timely given
that there is global religious freedom crisis and a negative
trajectory for religious freedom in countries that top the U.S.
foreign policy agenda.
It is evident from the media's top headlines and its
coverage of issues, including the genocide in Syria and Iraq,
the role of religion in humanitarian crises worldwide is
undeniable, including the forced displacement of the largest
number of people since World War II and the plight of prisoners
of conscience detained for simply expressing their God-given
religious freedom or advocating on behalf of this freedom in
countries such as China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt,
Syria, or Vietnam.
Pivotal to human rights, central to our history, and
affirmed by our international treaties and obligations,
religious freedom is crucial to the security of every nation
and that of our world.
A number of studies have shown that in countries that honor
and perfect this right, religious freedom generally is
associated with a vibrant political democracy. Rising economic
and social well-being and diminished tension and violence
follow. In contrast, nations that trample on religious freedom
are more likely to be mired in poverty, insecurity, or terror,
violence, and radical extremism.
This instability directly bears on not only the well-being
of those societies but on the security of the United States and
overall global stability. I can't emphasize enough the wisdom
in Congress in establishing USCIRF and looking at religious
freedom as a parameter by which to guide societal successes
versus societal failures.
Religious freedom thus merits a seat at the table, and I
personally would argue at the head of the table, with economic
and security concerns as the U.S. and other nations conduct
their complicated foreign affairs. But effectively promoting
religious freedom can help the U.S. achieve crucial goals by
fostering respect for human rights while promoting stability
and ultimately our national security.
So today I would like to focus on two things: One, how
IRFA, or the International Religious Freedom Act, has been and
should be used in the future; and, two, countries that are at
the top of our foreign policy agenda where religious freedom
remains under serious assault. And I have nine of them listed
in my submitted testimony, and I will just cover two as
examples.
First of all, as far as IRFA, IRFA seeks to make religious
freedom an important U.S. policy priority by, among other
measures, establishing consequences for the worst violators of
freedom of religion or belief.
This law gave teeth, long overdue, to the effort by
requiring the U.S. Government to designate annually countries
of particular concern, or CPCs, thereby naming the worst
foreign government violators that engage in or tolerate, as the
statute says, systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations and
take appropriate actions to create incentives for improvement
and disincentives for inaction. A menu of possible actions is
available, ranging from negotiating bilateral agreements, to
imposing sanctions, to taking a commensurate action, to issuing
waivers.
IRFA did not limit violations to government actions. The
law recognized that religious freedom violations also occur
through government inaction against abuses by private actors.
And this is very important. The 1998 statute does not, however,
adequately address the increasing actions of non-state actors
in failing or failed states. Allowing the United States to
designate--it did allow the United States to designate the non-
state actors perpetrating particularly severe violators of
religious freedom would broaden the U.S.'s ability to engage
the actual drivers of persecution.
And I would tell you, that absence in the statute, I think,
gives the State Department a pass sometimes in not designating
certain countries that should be a CPC and that they use that
as a crutch rather than naming them as CPCs because they are
non-state actors.
In order to effectively utilize all the tools provided in
IRFA, USCIRF recommends the State Department: Number one,
ensure that the CPC list expand and contract as conditions
warrant and not just be frozen for the most part, other than
the most recent addition that they had. It needs to expand and
contract realistically on an annual basis, not on a decade
basis.
Limit the use of waivers to set periods of time, and
subject them to review for renewal.
And we also recommend that Congress take legislative action
to require that the State Department make annual CPC
designations. Should the State Department fail to do so, we
also ask that the Congress expand CPC classification to allow
for the designation of countries where particularly severe
violations of religious freedom are occurring but a government
does not exist or does not control its territory. Right now,
those countries cannot be named.
And we would ask that the expansion of the CPC
classification to allow the naming of non-state actors who are
perpetrating particularly severe violations of religious
freedom. I commend you, Representative Smith, for including
such a position in H.R. 1150.
A couple country examples. In the interest of time, I am
going to talk about two of them, Burma and Egypt.
In Burma in 2015, peaceful elections ended more than 50
years of military-controlled government in Burma, yet the new
government faces a myriad of human rights challenges.
Throughout the year, the Burmese Government and non-state
actors continued to violate religious freedom, and these
violations became a defining element of their campaign season.
The abuses were particularly severe for the Rohingya
Muslims; their persecution became even more apparent when the
magnitude of their flight from Burma captured international
media attention.
Instead of protecting those most in need, like the
Rohingya, Burma's Government intensified its actions, isolating
and marginalizing vulnerable groups, leaving hundreds of
thousands of internally displaced Muslims and others without
basic necessities.
The government allowed expression of hatred and intolerance
toward religious and ethnic minorities to continue unchecked
and shepherded the passage of laws of four discriminatory race
and religion bills. And when I was there, we were told that
that probably wouldn't pass, and ultimately it did.
And I can't tell you how much Burma is a good example of
how political and other portfolios end up trumping religious
freedom portfolios, and it should be used as an example of why
IRFA is so important.
USCIRF continues to recommend in 2016 that Burma be
designated a CPC. The State Department designated Burma a CPC
since 1999. We ask that the U.S. Government use the term
``Rohingya'' publicly and privately, which respects the right
of the Rohingya Muslim community to identify as they choose and
not be marginalized.
And we ask that the U.S. enter into a binding agreement
with the Burmese Government, as defined in 405(c) of IRFA,
committing it to ending violence and the policies of
discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities.
Burma is a great example of the central importance of IRFA.
A state may focus inordinately on political improvements, not
putting IRFA at the head of table.
As far as Egypt, a lot has transpired in Egypt over the
past few years, with changes in government and revolutions. But
while the Egyptian Government has taken positive steps to
address some religious freedom concerns, including President
al-Sisi's public statements--which are now appearing to have
been rhetoric--encouraging religious tolerance and moderation,
past large-scale sectarian incidents have not been prosecuted,
fueling a growing climate of impunity.
In addition, the longstanding discriminatory and repressive
laws and policies that restrict religious freedom remain in
place like they always have been. During the past year, there
was an increase in Egyptian courts prosecuting, convicting, and
imprisoning Egyptian citizens for blasphemy and related
charges.
We recommended, thus, for a sixth year--the Commission did
when I was on it--recommended for the sixth year in a row that
Egypt be designated a CPC.
USCIRF also recommends that we ensure a portion of the U.S.
military assistance used to help police in Egypt implement an
effective plan for dedicated protection for religious minority
communities and their places of worship. And we also ask that
they press the Egyptian Government to undertake immediate
reforms to improve religious freedom conditions, including
repealing the decrees banning religious minority faiths,
including the Baha'i and Jehovah's Witness faiths.
Lastly, let me conclude by saying that we can and will see
the constructive change by improving our use of existing tools
for religious freedom and related rights and adding new tools
for that purpose. If we renew our resolve to integrate this
fundamental right more fully into our Nation's foreign policy,
we can bring genuine progress to those beyond our shores who
yearn for freedom.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Jasser follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Mr. Smith. And, Dr. Jasser, thank you, as well, for your
tremendous service on the Commission, your excellent writings,
which I have read and inserted in the record from time to time.
Thank you for that.
Dr. Jasser. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. I know, Dr. George, you do have to leave for a
train soon?
Mr. George. I did, but we have pushed the train back.
Mr. Smith. Okay. But I understand----
Dr. Jasser. I have to leave in 15 minutes.
Mr. Smith. Okay. So I will be very quick. And I thank you
again for your patience.
I have read for testimonies. The full will be made a part
of the record, and parts of the report, too, you know, that is
permissible under our rules, especially the executive summary
of the recent report.
You heard earlier when I quoted from the Supreme Knight----
Mr. George. Carl Anderson.
Mr. Smith [continuing]. Carl Anderson, who I have known for
35 years. And he made some very, very good, keen observations
about that the economic aid was not getting to the intended,
the Christians were being bypassed by design or by accident,
and also the importance of refugee status. And we have been
raising that in this subcommittee for months, even years, that
individuals who happen to be Christian, Yazidi, or Muslims who
are being targeted don't get the help that they need, but
especially Christians and Yazidis.
My question would be about--and its in your testimony, Dr.
George--the encouragement to the Global Coalition to Counter
ISIL, that they integrate their work so they understand
religious minorities. We haven't learned that lesson, it seems
to me.
I remember, with Kosovo, we actually had hearings with
Archbishop Artemije, who would bring in these terrible
depictions of centuries-old churches, monasteries being
decimated by radical Islamic terrorists.
And in Iraq, I remember on one trip to Baghdad hearing from
Christians who said, ``The Americans are here, and we are more
at risk now than we were before Saddam Hussein,'' when he
reigned--a very, very terrible indictment, in my opinion. And
then we would talk to the military, and they would say, ``We
have it covered,'' but they didn't.
And I am wondering if the Global Coalition is more attuned
to lessons learned, if you will--that they have to really have
a special prioritization and a laser-beam focus on, especially
now, those who have been designated victims of genocide. Do you
think that is happening? What would be your recommendations
there?
Mr. George. Well, I think it is necessary. I think we will
have to direct the question of whether it is happening to our
friends in the administration.
I am sure everybody is doing the best that he or she can on
this issue. It is obviously very complicated. It involves
coordination with other countries. It involves coordination
with United Nations agencies. We are not always on the same
page, our country with other countries or with the U.N. But I
think we really do have to make a very, very, very special
effort to protect the most vulnerable people. I mean, I think
that is the bottom line. Whatever has to be done, well, it
needs to be done, will be done, should be done to protect the
most vulnerable. And the most vulnerable are those who are
vulnerable to the worst offenses, to enslavement, torture,
rape, and murder.
And Congressman Rohrabacher is right that that is not
evenly distributed. Now, that doesn't mean that it is only
Christians or only Yazidis or never Muslims. There are Muslims
who are targeted for the same sort of atrocities that
Christians and Yazidis are targeted for. So you can't deal with
this simply by categorizing people neatly into groups. And yet
we do know that the entire Christian community and the entire
Yazidi community and some other smaller communities that we
have outlined in the written testimony and in our report--all
of the members of those communities are vulnerable in that way,
all of them.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask you, the seven countries you
recommended, and then you have a narrative for each, and you
have conveyed some of that orally today. Let me ask you about
Vietnam, if you might want to speak to that issue, which I
think is a no-brainer, that they ought to be designated a CPC.
They were taken off the list prematurely last time, in the
hope--and it was a realistic hope maybe--that they would
improve. They didn't.
Dr. George, I really appreciate your comment about the
right to worship. I remember, in 1982, when I want to the
Soviet Union, I kept hearing about how they had religious
freedom enshrined in their constitution, and they defined it as
right to worship, and even that was heavily truncated. But
everything else--schools, hospitals, social services--all were
part of the Communist Party's domain.
And I am very worried about a trend that is happening
worldwide, as I think you are. It is not right to worship; it
is much more robust and expansive than that. So thank you for
reminding the subcommittee of that, and you might want to speak
to it further.
And, on India, my understanding is that you had hoped to
travel to India last year. And I know that Rabbi Saperstein had
made inquiries about doing that as well. Could you speak to
that whole issue?
Mr. George. Sure. Yeah, let me start with that one----
Mr. Smith. Please.
Mr. George [continuing]. And then go back to a couple of
the other points that you made.
Yes, we have sent delegations, including members of the
Commission and members of our terrific staff. And I want to
take this opportunity to commend--now that I am no longer on
the Commission, I want to say what I said so often when I was
chairing the Commission.
The staff of the United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom is really quite extraordinary. It was just a
privilege to work with such knowledgeable and dedicated people.
There are very few of them; it is a small staff. They all do
much more work than should be required of any individual, but
that comes out of their dedication to the cause of religious
freedom.
Well, we send delegations, we have from the earliest days
of the Commission, to countries, not only to meet with public
officials and be schmoozed and entertained but also to try to
see if we can meet with members of faith groups, ethnic
minority communities, people who can give us the lowdown on
what is really happening on the ground.
We have found, over the course of our, what, 18 years or so
now, 19 years of existence, that these are very valuable
opportunities for us to learn what is going on on the ground
when it comes to religious freedom in these countries.
And, ordinarily, we are welcomed, even by some of the worst
offending regimes. We were, therefore, taken aback when our
proposed visit to India to do some fact-finding there was
rebuffed. Visas were not granted to our people to make the
trip.
Now, India is an ally. It is a democratic nation. There is
much to praise in the record of India, and we know that,
including in some human rights areas, but there are also some
problems. And we wanted to get our finger on those problems,
more deeply understand what we are quite confident is a
complicated picture. So we wanted to send our delegation. And
yet the Indian officials, by refusing to grant the visas, made
that impossible.
When I registered in the public media a relatively mild
protest, saying that it is really unfortunate that India has
not granted these visas, well, this was met with an outpouring
of--I am not quite sure how to say this politely--abuse by
people in India and those outside of India who are sympathizing
with some of the groups that we are concerned about, especially
Hindu nationalist groups that we are concerned about in India,
met with abuse directed toward me and directed toward the
Commission and directed toward my fellow commissioners,
claiming that we were engaging in neo-imperialism and so forth
and so on.
Of course, we are worried about some things that have
happened in India. Of course, there is the historic treatment
of the Dalit, which is shameful. There is the, in some cases,
persecution of Muslim minority groups, persecution of Christian
groups, and, of course, some abuses toward Indians, including
Hindus, who do not go along with the more extreme forms of
Hindu nationalism.
So we had a perfectly legitimate reason, Mr. Chairman, to
visit India: To engage. We wanted to engage them, we wanted to
listen, we wanted to hear what they had to say, the government
as well as the civil society groups. We had a perfectly
legitimate reason, but they don't want us to come.
And I do hope that when we seek visas again, when a future
commission seeks visas, India will reserve itself on this and
visit with our people and engage our people, talk with our
people. And let's see if we can work together toward improving
the human rights and religious freedom situation in India,
which the new President, President Modi, says that he wants to
do.
Now, you had raised a couple of other points, and I want to
give Zuhdi a chance to speak, because he has to run, if he was
something to say on those points.
But on this matter of the reduction of religious freedom to
the mere right to worship, I think we need to be very clear. We
need to be clear in our own minds and we need to be very clear
with those we are engaging on our own side, within the Congress
and the administration, and very, very clear with, especially,
offending regimes that the right to religious liberty is a
broad right, it is a robust right.
It is the right to hold a belief or no belief, as one's
conscience dictates. It is the right to change one's faith from
one to another, as conscience leads, or to abandon faith
altogether if that is where conscience leads.
It is the right to express one's faith, Mr. Chairman, in
public and not merely in private, to enter the public square
and to express one's views, advocate on behalf of one's
religious beliefs to others, as long as one also respects their
right to listen or not listen as they see fit, to engage one to
try to persuade one in the opposite direction.
And, very fundamentally--and let this never be lost--it
also means the right to enter the public square and, on the
basis of one's religiously informed convictions about justice
and the common good, advocate positions regarding public
policy, vie for the allegiance of one's fellow citizens, seek
to correct what one views as injustices, precisely as Dr.
Martin Luther King did.
Fortunately, we did not say to Dr. King, ``You are a
religious man, you are a preacher, you speak in terms of God
and the Bible. That violates the separation of church and
state. You can say that stuff in your church, but don't enter
the public square and try to change public policy based on this
religious teaching.''
To have said that to King would have been for us to be
profoundly untrue to our own convictions and principles as
embodied in our Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
And to say that to religious people today is equally an offense
against the best in our traditions.
Zuhdi, I want to give you a chance because you have to run
to the airport.
Dr. Jasser. Yeah.
Thank you, Chairman. There are actually four things I want
to--and they may not respond directly to your last question,
but just in the interest of time.
First of all, there was a comment made earlier about the
faith of the people escaping Syria. And as much as, certainly,
there has been a genocide perpetrated against the Yazidis, the
Christians, and other minorities by ISIS, to say that the
Muslim community--in all due respect to Congressman
Rohrabacher's opinion--is leaving because of jobs and other
issues, they were targeted, I believe--and this is my personal
opinion, not that of the Commission. There was a genocide
against the Sunnis and has been perpetrated for years, with
over 500,000 killed. Somewhere upwards of 95 percent of those
killed have been Sunni Muslims.
They are not leaving because of jobs and looking for a
better place. They are leaving because they have been targeted
by the Assad regime. And our recommendations do ask that that
be looked at.
And to that, actually, the comments about Russia, I think,
also need a contrary opinion to be responded to, which is that
our Commission has listed Russia as a country on the Watch List
or Tier 2, and I have a dissent in our report, that I believe
personally that Russia should be on the CPC list. It is not
just the Jehovah's Witness, but it is Muslims, and it is
systematic--I believe systematic and egregious changes in the
law. Their actions in Crimea, their actions in the Ukraine and
other places have demonstrated their complete disregard for
religious freedom, except the religion of the state.
And I will say, again, taking off my USCIRF hat but simply
as the chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy,
their actions in Syria are also perpetrating a genocide in a
foreign operation, which I think mirrors what they do
domestically in Russia. And I think you see this also with
Iran, who is helping what is happening in Syria. What they do
domestically they also do abroad.
Next is the issue on Saudi Arabia's waiver. I want to also
leave you with the thought that we need to bolster IRF
recommendations and statutes so that the waiver is not simply
used.
I have been to Saudi Arabia on behalf of USCIRF, and they
almost seem more concerned about the verbiage than even whether
we designated them as CPC, because they have had this
absolution of getting a waiver from the White House and the
State Department year after year. That is a blight on the
impact of IRFA, the waiver that continues to be given to Saudi
Arabia.
And the waivers are used, understandably, for national
security issues and others, but it makes the comments about
Natan Sharansky and all these other things that we say, that we
stand for freedom and prisoners of conscience, it makes it
simply a paper drill rather than actually having impacts, as we
said when we designated genocide. What is the impact if the
IRFA act of sanctions and other things don't fall into play?
Lastly, I want to use Malaysia as an example. It has been
on our Watch List. We went to Malaysia and Indonesia. We met
with civil society groups. And to Dr. George's comments,
women's groups after Islamic liberal groups told us: Stop
calling us a moderate Islamic country. They have been headed
toward more and more religious repression, and they do not
feel--the groups we spoke to do not feel that it is a moderate
Islamic country because of the infiltration of Islamism, Sharia
state mentality, Wahhabism, and other infiltration.
So these issues, I think, look at their designation that we
talk about in our report. And I think it is also very
instructive to show how religious freedom will follow than
other degradations of freedoms in those countries. Thank you.
Mr. George. Mr. Chairman, if I can just reinforce that
third point that Dr. Jasser made about the use of waivers.
Now, the statute permits the waivers. There is no question
about that, and we are not asking for that to be eliminated,
but I do think it is very important, if a waiver is to be
granted, that the waiver not be for an indeterminate length of
time, that it not be an indefinite waiver, number one. And
number two, I think it is critically important that we not give
unconditional waivers. If we are going to do unconditional
waivers, we are actually giving away the content of the CPC
designations.
So I am sorry that I would like to make this point to
David, although he has heard me make it before. Unfortunately,
he had to leave. But let's press on this, if we possibly can.
No more indefinite waivers. No more unconditional waivers.
Mr. Smith. As you know, the new International Religious
Freedom Act, the one that has passed the House, does limit to
90 days, with an additional 90 days, except for true national
security reasons, because waivers are violated with impunity by
administrations. And unfortunately, this one has done so like
no other.
I would also point out that when it comes to implementation
of these policies, faithfulness does matter. I also am the
author of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. On the most
recent occasion, 14 countries got inflated grades, and Reuters
did the investigative work that proved that the tipoff, this
trafficking person's office clearly said, this is a Tier 3
egregious violating country, Malaysia was one of them, but for
nonhuman trafficking purposes, got an inflated grade so that
they could be part of the TPP. Or Cuba, because we have a
rapprochement going, so we can throw them a bone even though
their policies on trafficking are atrocious. Same goes for Oman
and many other countries, 14 in total.
So we need to insist, all of us, on faithful implementation
of these statutes, whether it be religious freedom or
trafficking or any other human rights----
Mr. George. Exactly.
Mr. Smith [continuing]. Policy.
And, Mark.
Dr. Jasser. And just one last comment. I think there is
nothing that is more exemplary, emblematic of the sort of end
around that sometimes the State Department does on the CPC than
the fact that Syria is not listed as a CPC.
So to say that it is not a CPC, almost everyone I talk to
says that is a bizarre thing. And then you look at non-state
actor issues, et cetera, we have got to either fix IRFA so that
Syria--use that as a template to hold State Department
accountable, because if Syria is not a CPC, then what is a CPC?
Mr. George. I also owe you an answer, Mr. Chairman, on
Vietnam. And I think we just have to, frankly, acknowledge that
a mistake was made back in 2005, 2006 when, after Vietnam did
institute some reforms, the government acted precipitously, in
my opinion, to remove them from the list, and of course, they
slid right back into their old ways.
We have--we, again speaking as if I am still on the
Commission. I can't get out of that mode. But the Commission,
when Dr. Jasser and I were serving, and in the report for 2016,
does recommend CPC status for Vietnam. And I want to here
publicly again, urge the State Department at the earliest
opportunity to make that designation. And my hope would be that
it would have the good effect that it had earlier of getting
some reforms for the suffering people of all faiths, by the
way, of all faiths in Vietnam, whether we are talking about
Buddhists, whether we are talking about Catholics, whether we
are talking about the small evangelical Protestant minority.
All are victims there. I mean, it is a classic case of a
Communist regime wanting to eliminate or drive into the ground
any alternative authority structure of any kind, and of course,
religions are the most important alternative authority
structures in any society. So let's try to get Vietnam back on
the list.
Mr. Smith. Thank you for that. The Venerable Thich Quang
Do, I met him. He is still under pagoda arrest. He can't leave
his--he can't walk out the door without government people
pushing him right back in. Father Loi, there are so many, and
then all of those who are actually in prison still. So thank
you for that leadership.
Mark Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Dr. Jasser, I am going to give you your exit
and just say thank you so much for not only being willing to be
bold and speak the truth. It is refreshing, because of your
faith and because of who you are, to be able to use you in a
real way to discern some of the aspects that perhaps, because
of my faith, I would be ignorant of. And so I just want to say
thank you. And I know you have got to catch a plane, so I don't
want you to have to hang around.
Dr. Jasser. Thank you.
Mr. Meadows. We have had a number of personal meetings, and
I look forward to many more. And so I will pick up on a
question for Dr. George as you leave. How about that?
Dr. Jasser. Thank you. Let me just make one parting
comment, as it has been such a humbling honor to serve on
USCIRF. It is always amazing how the American public, media,
Government are--we have this American penchant not to offend
other faiths and to protect, in the name of religious freedom,
protecting other faiths.
And yet we forget that our roots--these halls were created
by our forefathers who were devout God-fearing Christians that
hated theocracy, that wanted to defeat theocracy, and yet we
don't want to give the same battle to Muslims.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Dr. Jasser. That somehow, if Muslims are against theocracy,
or we, as Christians, or Jews or not, I am not a--I am Muslim,
but we--the majority in America can't enable Muslims who are
antitheocracy to have a voice in the name of a faith they love
with tough love, then we seem to have forgotten the roots of
the Founding Fathers.
Mr. Meadows. Well said. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Jasser.
Mr. George. May I, as my friend and colleague is leaving,
just say one thing about him because I think it is very
important for the Congress and for the American people to
understand this. Dr. Jasser's profound witness in favor of
American ideals and institutions, in favor of liberty, in favor
of justice comes from his Muslim faith. Does everybody
understand this? This man is a good American, not because he is
a bad Muslim. He is not a bad Muslim. He is a devout believing
Muslim, and it is from his faith that he joins together with
all of us who want to uphold religious freedom for all.
So I would say to my fellow Americans: Look at this man
when you are tempted to think that the only way a Muslim can be
a good American is to be a bad Muslim. No. That is not what the
witness and example of Zuhdi Jasser stands for.
Mr. Meadows. Well said.
Mr. George. To be the very best of Muslims is like being
the very best of Christians or very best of Jews. It is to be
someone who stands for justice and human rights as Zuhdi Jasser
has done.
Mr. Meadows. Well said.
Dr. Jasser. I am--too humbling. Thank you.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Dr. Jasser.
Dr. George, let me come back to you. One, you just made a
very impassioned and what I would think insightful argument on
behalf of religious freedom, not the freedom to worship as we
please. And there is a big difference between the two, and it
seems like there has been--now, one includes the other, but a
freedom of worship doesn't necessarily include the expanse of
what you just articulated. And I think that is a defining
moment that we must, on every main street across this great
country that we love, start to show the difference, because
what has crept into so much of our rhetoric and speeches is the
freedom to worship as we please.
Would you agree that that is not what the Founding Fathers
intended when we talked about religious liberty and protection?
Mr. George. The Founding Fathers certainly, certainly, we
can say this with certainty, did not mean to limit the free
exercise of religion, as it says in the First Amendment, to the
mere freedom to worship. The free exercise of religion
certainly includes, centrally includes the freedom of worship,
but it includes so much more.
And that is why, Representative Meadows, I went into some
detail. I am grateful to the chairman's indulgence because it
was a little bit off point, my little philosophical lecture,
but I think it is relevant to the practical issues that we are
dealing with today because some people are tempted to think
that people enjoy freedom of religion if they enjoy the freedom
to attend the mosque or the church or the synagogue, to pray
around the dinner table or on their knees at bedtime. But the
reality is, if that is all they have got, they have only got a
fragment of the fundamental human right to religious freedom,
which does include the right to go into the public square to
advocate, to act on one's religiously inspired or religiously
informed judgments about justice and the common good, as Martin
Luther King did.
There is no sense, none, zero, in which our Founding
Fathers, including Jefferson, who is often trotted out as an
anti-religious person or as a person who wanted to restrict
religion to the narrowest confines of the private sphere, there
was no Founding Father, including Jefferson, who sought a
privatization of religion. It was Jefferson, Representative
Meadows, who said, speaking of slavery, himself a slave owner,
who said, speaking of slavery: I tremble for my country--not
just I tremble for myself, as if it were a private sin--I
tremble for my country when I consider that God is just, that
his justice will not sleep forever.
There are some times when we must tremble for our country
because of injustices that we, as a people, are guilty of, and
there, the prophetic voice of faith must speak to us not in the
narrow confines of private life but in our public lives
together as citizens.
Mr. Meadows. Well, it is indeed foundational. It is truly
what I believe our Founding Fathers not only envisioned but
practiced. And so in doing that, it is important for us as we
preserve those liberties. So let me shift gears, and I want to
talk a little bit about Sudan.
I heard Ambassador Saperstein talk about the potential for
real progress in Sudan. I know I have personally met with not
only Sudanese Government officials here in Washington, DC, on
this topic, as well as the economic prosperity of Sudan. We
know where they are today in terms of not only sanctions but
other potential retributions that--because of their government
philosophy. And yet, I guess I would be remiss in not asking,
is there a glimmer of hope where truly we can find the start,
the kernel of a seed supposedly sprouting for religious liberty
and protection?
I have sensed some of that from government officials and
from those who talk on their behalf here in Washington, DC, and
yet I hear conflicting messages from those, some that are in
countries. And I go way back with Sudan. My mom was in Khartoum
almost 50 years ago, and we have been very supportive of those
who have horrifically had to eat leaves off of trees to
survive. And so in doing that, it is not with an ignorance of
what has happened but with a hope of what could potentially
happen, and so I ask you to give me your candid thoughts on
that.
Mr. Smith. Would the gentleman yield before----
Mr. Meadows. Sure.
Mr. Smith. I would just note, and I think the records
reflect it, Mr. Meadows played the pivotal role in effectuating
the release of Meriam Ibrahim.
Mr. George. Yes.
Mr. Smith. He got the entire Congress mobilized, meetings
with the Ambassador and he had a very, very effective
diplomatic initiative that yielded the release of that
wonderful woman and her children. So I just think the record
should recognize that.
Mr. Meadows. Well, you are very kind. I thank the
gentleman, and he is humble in not acknowledging his own role
in that particular situation.
But please, Dr. George.
Mr. George. Well, I know I speak for an awful lot of people
in the religious freedom advocacy community in saying that we
thank you both for your efforts on her behalf. I had the
pleasure of being on the dais with her when the Pope spoke in
Philadelphia. She and I were among the warmup acts for Pope
Francis, so I got to speak with her and then to listen to her
give her speech. And she is a wonderful witness, and she is
here because of your work. And we are just so grateful for her
and for what you did for her, and in that way, also for all of
us.
Representative Meadows, my heart breaks for the people of
Sudan. Those people have suffered for so long and so intensely.
Weak government, corruption, persecution, abuse, civil war. It
is hard to think of a spot on earth more bleak, more dismal for
the people than Sudan. Religious freedom in Sudan remains--the
conditions for religious freedom remain poor. I can't--I
can't--I can't give you a rosy picture. The reality is what it
is.
But I have known Ambassador Saperstein for many, many
years. I have worked with him long before he came to his
position as--I wish he had more power.
Mr. Meadows. Yeah.
Mr. George [continuing]. Before he came to his position as
Ambassador. And if he perceives a glimmer of hope, that is
enough for me to conclude that there is a glimmer of hope, but
it can't really be more than a glimmer. So the question is: How
do we do something with that? If there is a little ember still
alive, how do we work to see if we can fan that into a flame?
Well, first, of course, we have to acknowledge the reality.
Since 2011, members of Sudan's Christian community, minority
Christian community have been arrested, their religious
buildings desecrated or destroyed, churches and their
educational institutions and schools and so forth, Sunday
schools closed, and their literature, even their religious
literature has been confiscated. There continues to be a
persecution.
So if anything is to be done, our recommendations to our
Government are as follows: Try to enter into an agreement with
the Government of Sudan that would set forth our commitment--
set out a set of commitments that the Government of Sudan would
undertake to address the worst offenses.
First, end prosecutions and punishments for apostasy.
Second, maintain provisions currently in the interim
constitution respecting the country's international human
rights commitments and guaranteeing religious freedom. At a
minimum, those formal guarantees. Now, we know formal
guarantees, parchment guarantees, as our Founders called them,
aren't enough, but they are a necessary condition of doing
more, so we need to get those into the actual final
constitution.
Lift government prohibitions on church construction, the
issuance of permits for building new churches; create legal
mechanisms to provide compensation for those congregations who
have had their churches destroyed; and get serious about
addressing attacks on churches or on religious people, like
Christians, who are victimized when rogue individuals or groups
of thugs or mobs commit those atrocities against people.
Prosecute them, punish them, repeal or revise all articles in
the 1991 criminal code which violate Sudan's international
commitments to religious freedom and belief.
And then finally, hold people accountable, whether they are
government officials or private individuals, for any attacks on
houses of worship, on individuals, any acts of discrimination
against people because of their religious affiliation or
religious beliefs. That is what we would like to see in an
agreement entered into between our Government and the
Government of Sudan.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Dr. George.
Mr. Chairman, I will yield back. I thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Dr. George. And anything else, Dr. George, you
would like to----
Mr. George. I would like to say a word about Pakistan.
Mr. Smith. Please do.
Mr. George. We haven't spoken enough about Pakistan. Of
those seven nations that you rightly pressed Ambassador
Saperstein about, the State Department not designating. We have
made recommendations for designations as CPCs. Among those
seven nations who haven't been designated, despite our
recommendation, in many cases despite more than a decade of
recommendations, if I had to choose one, it would be a bit of a
tough choice because you have got Vietnam, for example, on the
list, but if I had to choose one, if the State Department would
give me one that I could designate myself out of the seven, I
am afraid it would be Pakistan.
Pakistan is one of the world's worst offenders. And once
again, that is especially ironic because you have a democratic
country, you have--always an ally of the United States. We have
been calling for this designation for an awfully long time, and
it is really high time that the designation be made. And
remember, this is a place where the persecution and abuse is
meted out against various religious minorities, including
Muslim religious minorities, such as the Shia minority, or
indeed those members of the Sunni community who dare to express
any dissent from the extremism of the official policy.
The abuse of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan,
the ongoing egregious systematic long-term abuse rooted not
only in government policy but in prejudice within the civil
society has got to be made a priority. The Ahmadiyya Muslims
are peaceful people. They have caused no harm to anyone in
Pakistan. They simply wish to worship as their conscience leads
them. They wish to call themselves Muslims because they believe
that they are Muslims. They follow the Koran, the other
traditional Muslim teachings, and yet, as a matter of
constitutional law of Pakistan, they are discriminated against.
In the very constitutional law, they are not permitted to call
themselves Muslims.
Now, within any religious community, there may be
disagreements. Members of one Christian denomination may feel
that members of another group who call themselves Christians
aren't really Christians because they don't have the right
doctrines and so forth, and yet we would rightly be appalled if
anyone sought to use government power to punish people who
called themselves Christians, despite somebody else believing
that they are not really Christians.
Well, government power is being used against the peaceful
Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan. That is also true of Saudi
Arabia, by the way, but it is especially true in Pakistan. And
I would really like the Congress to make it a priority in the
advocacy concerning Pakistan that Pakistan must cease the
oppression of the Ahmadiyya. And I think the same should be
true, by the way, when we are talking about the Baha'i minority
in places like Iran. Here again is a peaceful religious group,
has never caused anybody any harm, are persecuted simply
because of their beliefs.
These are really egregious cases because governments can't
hide behind the concern that, well, we are really fighting
terrorism. We have to oppress this group or that group because
terrorism is being incubated in those groups. Nobody can say
that about the Ahmadiyya. Nobody can say that about the
Baha'is.
But back to Pakistan. The abuses are so widespread and so
deeply entrenched that we need to put as much pressure as we
can on our Government to put as much pressure as it can on the
Pakistani Government so that it will begin to relent from its
own abuses and start doing something about the abuses of
religious minorities by private organizations or individuals or
mobs burning down churches and so forth within Pakistan.
So thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me a few minutes to
make that point about Pakistan.
Mr. Smith. Oh, thank you. And as we know, Indonesia, as you
point out, also is discriminatory toward Ahmadiyya, the
Muslims. So I am losing my voice. I apologize.
Thank you, Dr. George. I know you have missed two trains. I
am deeply appreciative and----
Mr. George. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith [continuing]. I thank you for your tremendous
leadership. It has made a colossal difference in a positive
way, so thank you.
The hearing is adjourned.
Mr. George. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Whereupon, at 4:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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