c. 1999 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ In what could be a replay of last year’s fight over protecting religious freedom abroad, a split has developed within religious ranks over the inclusion of sanctions in a House bill aimed at curbing the international trafficking of women and children for sex.

The Freedom from Sexual Trafficking Act of 1999 _ whose principal sponsors are Reps. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., and Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio _ includes a call for cutting off all”nonhumanitarian”U.S. aid for nations that”do not meet minimum standards for the elimination of sexual trafficking.” Unlike early versions of what became the International Religious Freedom Act, the sexual trafficking legislation provides for a presidential waiver of sanctions should the White House determine that invoking it is in the”national interest.” The last-minute inclusion of a similar waiver broke last year’s political logjam that allowed a broad spectrum of religious leaders, the Congress and the Clinton administration to finally unite behind the religious freedom act, which made the treatment of religious believers abroad an official U.S. foreign policy concern.

Nearly 140 mostly conservative religious leaders and social policy activists signed a June 16 letter supporting the Smith-Kaptur bill that was sent to President Clinton and House and Senate leaders. In addition to the sanctions threat, the bill would seek to help nations prosecute sexual traffickers, assist trafficking victims in the United States and create a State Department office to oversee U.S. efforts on the issue.”As the millennium closes, it is hard to fathom that up to 2 million women and children _ as documented by the State Department, United Nations and others _ are led each year into tragic lives of sexual slavery,”the letter began. Some 200,000 girls from Nepal and”hundreds of thousands of women from the former Soviet Union”are among those forcibly taken across international borders for sexual purposes, it continued.

The letter also said that”our own government estimates that 50,000 to 100,000 women and girls are trafficked into the United States each year”and that”the God-given dignity and integrity of each individual compels us to take action to combat this evil.” Among the signers were the Rev. Richard Cizik, interim director of the National Association of Evangelicals’ Washington office; Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ International; Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship Ministries; Focus on the Family’s James C. Dobson; Southern Baptist Convention President Paige Patterson and Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action.

The few liberal signers included Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and evangelicals Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine and Tony Campolo, a Clinton spiritual adviser.

Cizik, a key organizer of the effort, said in a Thursday (June 24) interview that the threat of sanctions was needed”to give the president the leverage he needs”to gain the support of foreign governments in ending sexual trafficking.

However, the Rev. Jay Lintner, a Washington public policy official for the National Council of Churches, disagreed.”Economic sanctions are a form of warfare,”Lintner said in his own letter sent to Smith, Kaptur and other congressional members involved in the issue.

Lintner said Third World poverty often fuels sexual trafficking and”we think threatening to cut off aid or actually cutting off aid to countries and forcing them into greater poverty is mean-spirited, wrong-headed, and counter-productive.” The NCC, whose 35 member denominations include many liberal mainline Protestant groups, also led the religious opposition to automatic sanctions included in the original religious freedom bill. The NCC eventually backed compromise legislation once the sanctions waiver was added. But this time, Lintner said, even the threat of sanctions is too much.”We appreciate that there is a presidential waiver for these sanctions,”he wrote.”But either way we lose. Either aid is cut, and great harm is done. Or a waiver is used, the threat of sanctions is seen as empty, and we’ve managed to project ourselves as global bullies without changing anything.” In an interview, Lintner also said he was concerned that some conservatives who back the sexual trafficking bill”think they’ve found a new issue to invigorate the religious right and embarrass the religious left.” Still, Lintner said his objections to the bill are”preliminary”and that he will meet with Cizik, Saperstein and other backers of the bill in an attempt to strike a compromise.”We agree with five-sixths of the bill already and want to make this work,”he said.

The House has yet to begin work on the bill other than send it to various committees for consideration. The White House has yet to comment.

DEA END RIFKIN