2 of 3

Michael Horowitz, who directs the conservative Hudson Institute's Project for International Religious Liberty, said from his seat that as a Jew he was amazed at the unified effort of Christians in the past six years.

"You don't know your own power," Horowitz said. "For God's sake, keep it up. You're really doing God's work not only for your own people, but for mine and everyone else's."

Horowitz told of government officials in Islamic countries who publicly denounce him after his organization exposes abuses—then privately encourage him to keep it up, providing him information on their regime's latest human rights violations.

Various leaders spoke out against abuses in Sudan, noting that the White House and Senate have stalled a bill that would prohibit foreign companies with investments in Sudan from listing their names on U.S. stock exchanges.

With Sudanese oil revenues gushing thanks to foreign oil firms (U.S. sanctions prohibit American concerns from participating in Sudanese projects), the regime in Khartoum hopes to build up enough military might to crush the Christian and animist south in the 19-year civil war. The Muslim regime imposed shari'ah law in 1983.

"Make no mistake about it—the most significant factor in this war is religion," Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom, told the summit. "U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan John Danforth has not addressed underlying issues of religious freedom."

Besides vigils and protests, concerned citizens can go to Freedom House's Web site to send automatic letters of support for the stalled Sudan Peace Act to their senators, Shea said.

Paul Marshall, Senior Fellow at the Center for Religion Freedom, told CT that without the capital markets prohibition of the Sudan Peace Act, foreign companies "can come here and raise money from Americans to do things that no American companies are allowed to do."

"There need to be pressure points—levers, sticks—available for addressing the Sudanese government," he said. "At the moment the Sudan Peace Act doesn't have enough incentives for a real and just peace."

Awareness of religious persecution has risen substantially in both churches and the media since the first summit, Marshall said, and there have been a few concrete victories—the release of prisoners in Uzbekistan after the intervention of then-Ambassador for Religious Freedom Robert Seiple, and Vietnam granting legal status to the Evangelical Church of Vietnam. But Marshall said he is amazed at the lack of knowledge that persists among some policy makers and media.

"Many reporters are ignorant and don't have contacts with people in the churches, so they often miss what is happening," Marshall told CT. "And like many other human rights, in terms of U.S. foreign policy, religious freedom will often get all too quickly sidelined in favor of other issues."

The elevation of religious freedom as an issue in Washington over the past six years is undeniable, Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship Ministries told the summit. But the cause goes on, he said, to make tyrants aware that people have inalienable rights—"pre-government rights that governments can neither grant nor take away because they're given by God."

The Rt. Rev. Henry Riak, bishop of Wau Diocese, Episcopal Church of Sudan, was denied such rights. But, sporting a Southern Sudan Under Tree Schools ball cap, the bishop told the summit that his imprisonment from 1994 to 1999 for being "against Islam" gave him many opportunities to convert Muslims to Christ. He said a prisoner once told him that, as he bowed among a line of Muslim worshippers, Christ on the cross revealed himself to him in a mosque.

next page... |  2 of 3

share this page

April (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46