c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers Tuesday (March 17) urged their fellow members of Congress to”adopt”foreign individuals imprisoned for their religious beliefs and to work to secure their freedom.

The effort is the latest project by some members of Congress to push the United States toward greater advocacy on behalf of religious freedom in its foreign policy. It is modeled on similar efforts organized in the 1970s to help Jewish dissidents in the former Soviet Union and Amnesty International’s”prisoners of conscience”campaign to aid imprisoned political dissidents.

Working with religious freedom activists, the congressmen have lobbied the White House to push China, Vietnam, some Muslim nations and others on the issue.

The lawmakers _ many of them conservative Christians _ maintain Christians are the most persecuted religious minority abroad. However, they also say Tibetan Buddhists, Iranian Baha’is and others are also subjected to systematic government-sanctioned religious persecution.

The group’s most touted effort is the proposed Freedom from Religious Persecution Act currently before the Congress. The bill would trigger U.S. economic sanctions against nations found to be persecuting its citizens because of their religious beliefs.”Religious freedom is at the heart of the American experience, but it has too often been far from the heart of American foreign policy,”said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., a leader of the effort.

At a Capitol Hill news conference, Rep. Joseph R. Pitts, R-Pa., said the Religious Prisoners Congressional Task Force, as the adoption effort has been labeled, seeks to get lawmakers to act as”a voice for suffering religious believers around the world.”Lawmakers would intervene on behalf of their adopted prisoners with governments and international leaders.”Reputable human rights organizations report from experience that when congressional members engage in advocacy with key government officials, prisoners’ lives can change for the better, prison conditions alter, torture ceases and prisoners may even be released,”Pitts said.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said the congressional effort will be coordinated with a similar one already under way in the British parliament.

He called religious freedom a core human right.”The most fundamental human right is what one does with their soul,”Brownback said.

The task force is initially focusing on the cases of Chinese Catholic and Protestant dissidents who lead”underground”churches outside Beijing’s tightly controlled orbit of officially recognized churches.

They have also taken up the case of the Panchen Lama of Tibet. The Panchen Lama, Tibet’s second highest Buddhist religious leader after the exiled Dalai Lama, is a young boy detained by Beijing. China wants to install another youth in place of the imprisoned one, who was picked for the post by the Dalai Lama.

Cases involving four Pakistani Christians who face possible execution for alleged blasphemy against Islam, a Sudanese facing the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity, and Iranian Baha’is sentenced to death”for the simple reason of their religious associations,”according to a task force statement, are also being initially publicized.

Rep. Tony Hall, D-Ohio, said focusing attention on the cases through the adoption effort can be effective because”abusive governments don’t like international attention on their policies.”

DEA END RIFKIN