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Religious Persecution in the Middle East; Faces of the Persecuted

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Religious Persecution in the Middle East; Faces of the Persecuted S. HRG. 105±352 RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST; FACES OF THE PERSECUTED HEARINGS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION May 1 and June 10, 1997 Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations ( U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 40±890 CC WASHINGTON : 1998 COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS JESSE HELMS, North Carolina, Chairman RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware PAUL COVERDELL, Georgia PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming CHARLES S. ROBB, Virginia ROD GRAMS, Minnesota RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California BILL FRIST, Tennessee PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas JAMES W. NANCE, Staff Director EDWIN K. HALL, Minority Staff Director SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas, Chairman GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon CHARLES S. ROBB, Virginia ROD GRAMS, Minnesota DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California JESSE HELMS, North Carolina PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland 2 CONTENTS Page RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN THE MIDDLE EASTÐTHURSDAY, MAY 1, 1997 Coffey, Steven J., Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor ........................................................... 15 Phares, Dr. Walid, Professor of International Relations, Florida Atlantic Uni- versity, Miami, Florida ........................................................................................ 29 Shea, Nina, Director, Puebla Program on Religious Freedom, Freedom House, Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 26 Wolf, Hon. Frank, U.S. Representative From Virginia ........................................ 3 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 7 Ye'or, Bat, Author, Geneva, Switzerland ............................................................... 24 FACES OF THE PERSECUTEDÐTUESDAY, JUNE 10, 1997 Anonymous Witness From Pakistan ...................................................................... 60 Barakat, Colonel Sharbel, Lebanon ....................................................................... 63 Bennett, Hon. William J., Co-Director, Empower America, Washington, DC .... 42 Prepared statement (with Senator Lieberman) ............................................. 44 Ebrahimi, Esmaeil, Iran (through his interpreter, Fannoosh Carrera) .............. 76 Horowitz, Michael J., Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Washington, DC .......... 48 Lieberman, Hon. Joseph I., U.S. Senator From Connecticut ............................... 40 Prepared statement (with William J. Bennett) .............................................. 44 Roderick, Father Keith, Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights, Macomb, Illinois ................................................................................................................... 53 APPENDIX A. Documents Detailing Efforts of the Chinese Communist Party to Supress ``Illegal'' Religious Activities A Document of the Donglai Township Committee of the Chinese Com- munist Party ................................................................................................. 77 A Document of the Tong Xiang City Municipal Public Security Bureau/ Chinese Communist Party Tong Xiang City Committee, United Front Works Department ........................................................................................ B. Prepared statement of Steven J. Coffey ............................................................ 88 C. Prepared statement of Bat Ye'or ....................................................................... 93 Dhimmitude: Jews and Christians Under Islam, by Bat Ye'or .................... 96 D. Prepared statement of Nina Shea ..................................................................... 103 E. Prepared statement of Michael J. Horowitz ..................................................... 108 F. Prepared statement of Father Keith Roderick ................................................. 111 G. Prepared statement of Colonel Sharbel Barakat ............................................. 118 H. Prepared statement of Esmaeil Ebrahimi ........................................................ 121 (III) 3 RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST THURSDAY, MAY 1, 1997 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in room SD±419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Sam Brownback, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding. Present: Senators Brownback and Smith. Senator BROWNBACK. We will go ahead and get this hearing started. Thank you all for joining me this morning on this first hearing on religious persecution in the Middle East. I think it is particu- larly appropriate that we are having this hearing today, on the Na- tional Day of Prayer in our country, and that we recognize the is- sues of religious persecution taking place in the world. Intolerance knows few boundaries. It is a problem that, in one form or another, plagues most of the world. Men and women of faith endure harassment, discrimination, imprisonment, torture, and risk death; because they choose to practice their faith, what- ever that faith may be. From the Copts in Egypt to Shiites in Iraq, to Christians and Baha'is in Iran, systematic persecution and dis- crimination directed against religious minorities occurs throughout the region. Because of many diplomatic reasons and sometimes, unfortu- nately, just sheer indifference, our government and others in our country have not chosen to speak out in some cases. The press is always hyper-sensitive to the observation of civil and human rights, but finds the idea sometimes of religious freedom less inter- esting. Our silence has only emboldened the persecutors. I thought it particularly interesting in a column that A.M. Rosen- thal put forward in Tuesday's New York Times that he underscored this point. He specifically warned that American Christians' lack of knowledge about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East ``tends to make Americans passive about the persecution of Chris- tians. As long as passivity lasts, so long will persecution continue.'' [The information referred to follows:] (1) 2 THE WELL POISONERS [by A.M. Rosenthal] The New York Times/April 29, 1997.ÐThey are outsiders among us. They use their foreign religion to poison our wells, and destroy our belief in ourselves and the God we must follow. Throughout the persecution of Jews, that has been the accusation and justifica- tion: an evil religion of the evil outsider. In their terror and helplessness, sometimes victims pleaded that the charge of for- eignness was not trueÐlook at us, we are like youÐalmost as if being different made their persecution at least explicable to the human mind. Now foreignness is the weapon used by persecutors of Christians in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Islamicist inquisitors use the weapon in the name of heavenly righteousness, the Chinese political police in the name of their frightened, last-ditch nationalism. Both types of persecutors of Christians benefit from a peculiar protectionÐthe at- titude of many Western Christians that Christianity is indeed foreign to Asia and Africa, a valuable export certainly, but not really, well, indigenous, to the soil. So they see faraway Christianity as separate from themselves. This profits persecutors, by preventing the persecuted from getting the succor they need, and due them. The aloofness of Christians to their distant persecuted is a denial of the reality that Christianity was not only born in the Mideast but spread wide and deep in Asia and Africa long before Islam or Western Christian missionaries arrived. By now, according to David B. Barret's Annual Statistical Table on Global Mis- sion, 1996, there are 300 million church-affiliated Christians in Asia, the same num- ber in AfricaÐand 200 million in all of North America. Americans are waking up to the persecution of Christians in Communist China. Their own Government, however, gives it zero priority compared with Washington's lust for the bizarre privilege of trade with China granted by Beijing: to buy eight times more from China than China does from America. But how many Americans know or care about the increasing persecution of Mid- east Christians, like the 10 million Copts of EgyptÐthe largest Christian commu- nity in the region? Copts are vilified as outsiders, though they have lived in Egypt since the seventh century. In February and March, 25 Copts were shot to death in Islamicist attacks on a church and a school. The attacks were part of the worst outbreak of Christian-kill- ing in 25 years. And Islamic fundamentalists have been allowed to carry out year- round harassment of Copts, including destruction of churches that Copts then are not allowed to rebuild. In early April Mustapha Mashour, ``general guide'' of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, a fountain of Mideast terrorism for 50 years, announced a new goal: to bar Copts from the army, police and senior government positions on the grounds that they were a fifth column. He also demanded that a ``protection tax'' be imposed on Christians,
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