c. 2006 Religion News Service
Human Rights Watch: `War on Terror’ Has Hampered Religious Freedom
NEW YORK (RNS) The governments of a number of countries, including China and Uzbekistan, are branding political opponents as Islamic terrorists and using the “war on terror” as a way to stifle dissent, Human Rights Watch said in its annual global survey of human rights conditions.
The report by the New York-based human rights watchdog and advocacy group, covering the year 2005, was issued Wednesday (Jan. 18). It said that counterterrorism policies are having a harmful effect on the global defense of human rights.
“Fighting terrorism is central to the human rights cause,” said Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director. “But using illegal tactics against alleged terrorists is both wrong and counterproductive.”
The report was particularly critical of Bush administration policies it said had condoned torture and made it difficult for the United States to pressure other states to respect international law. It also noted that other countries are using the war on terror to crack down on opponents, with religious and cultural identity often a factor in stifling dissent.
It noted that in 2005, the government of China continued to crack down on the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Some Uighurs are waging a separatist campaign, and the Chinese government has responded with measures that have included the destruction of mosques, Human Rights Watch said.
Campaigns against Uighurs have also included secret and summary trials, the survey said, as well as imposition of the death penalty.
China, also criticized in the report for its strict policies of trying to regulate religious practice within the country, has used the war on terrorism, the report said, “to justify its policies, making no distinction between the handful of separatists who condone violence and those who desire genuine autonomy or a separate state.”
The survey noted similar policies in the onetime Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, where authorities reportedly killed hundreds of unarmed protesters during a May 13, 2005, demonstration in the eastern part of the country.
Uzbekistan’s authoritarian government, the report said, continues a campaign against those whose religious practice falls outside strict government controls. “The government justifies this campaign by referring to the `war on terror,’ failing to distinguish between those who advocate violence and those who peacefully express their religious beliefs,” the survey said.
_ Chris Herlinger
Faith-Based Group Files Suit to Connect Workers With Back Wages
WASHINGTON (RNS) A faith-based workers’ rights group has sued the U.S. Labor Department in a bid to release the names of migrant workers who are owed back wages but are classified as “unlocatables.”
Chicago-based Interfaith Worker Justice said it wants to connect an estimated 95,000 workers with $32 million held by the Labor Department as part of back-wages settlements. Government officials said releasing the names would violate privacy laws.
Kim Bobo, the director of IWJ, said her office will do the legwork to connect workers with the money, but can’t find the workers unless she knows who to look for. Cooperation between her office and the Labor Department came to an end in 2004, she said.
“We are surprised and baffled that the agency charged with looking out for workers refuses to release information that could help connect workers to money owed them,” she said.
Many of the workers are believed to be migrant workers, and Bobo says many of them may have returned to Mexico. Bobo is seeking their names, the companies they worked for and dates of employment.
Bobo’s office tried to obtain the names through the Freedom of Information Act, hoping to post them in an online database. Labor officials, however, feared releasing the names could open the process to fraudulent claims.
“There were some legal concerns about privacy protections that we indicated to the group, that would prevent us or preclude us because of some overarching concerns about giving personal, identifiable information to a nongovernment entity,” Alfred B. Robinson, director of Labor’s wage and hour division, told The New York Times.
In a suit filed Wednesday (Jan. 18) in federal court in Washington, Bobo and the public advocacy group Public Citizen said “unlocatable workers have an interest in having their names disclosed.” Bobo had to file suit because her office has “exhausted its administrative remedies,” the complaint said.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Civil Rights Leader Expelled from Vanderbilt to Return as Professor
(RNS) A retired Methodist pastor and civil rights leader whose expulsion from Vanderbilt University caused a national furor 46 years ago will return to the university as a distinguished professor.
The Nashville, Tenn., university announced the one-year appointment Wednesday (Jan. 18) as the Rev. James Lawson was named Vanderbilt’s 2005 Distinguished Alumnus.
“It’s not often that either persons or institutions have an opportunity to redress a grievous wrong,” said Lucius Outlaw, Vanderbilt’s associate provost for undergraduate education. “The expulsion of James Lawson was a significant moment in the history of Vanderbilt that set it back decades.
“Bringing him here isn’t about making apologies, because that happened many years ago,” Outlaw added. “It’s about a new point in our relationship with him, and continuing the process of working our way past the perception of Vanderbilt as a white, segregated, arrogant institution.”
Lawson, pastor emeritus of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, where he served for 25 years before retiring in 1999, said: “This is for me an unexpected, even momentous personal instant in my journey.”
Dubbed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “the leading nonviolence theorist in the world,” Lawson helped organize sit-ins by black students that led to the desegregation of lunch counters in downtown Nashville. He also was active in civil rights struggles in Alabama and Mississippi.
His expulsion from Vanderbilt for his role in the movement and the resulting resignations of faculty members in protest embroiled the campus and the Nashville community in a nationally reported controversy for months in the spring of 1960. Eventually, a compromise was forged to stop most of the resignations and allow Lawson to complete his degree in Nashville. But Lawson instead chose to transfer to Boston University.
“No other alumnus has contributed so much to issues of national and international justice and peace, and the promotion of a non-violent worldview,” Vanderbilt Chancellor Gordon Gee said. “James Lawson _ and the faculty and students who supported him in 1960 _ knew Vanderbilt’s true mission even before Vanderbilt understood it entirely.”
_ Bobby Ross Jr.
State of Massachusetts Orders New Tests on Comatose Girl
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (RNS) A day after the state’s highest court decided a state agency could remove 11-year-old Haleigh Poutre from life support, a state official said the Westfield girl at the center of a child abuse case has shown a definite change in condition, and new medical tests will be conducted.
Denise Monteiro, spokeswoman for the state Department of Social Services, which has custody of Haleigh, said Wednesday (Jan. 18) that the girl’s medical team is beginning a battery of tests to determine her long-term prognosis.
Asked if “change” means improvement, Monteiro declined comment. Monteiro did say, however, “I don’t believe this is the miracle everyone has been hoping for.”
The case has attracted national attention and drawn the concern of the Catholic Church and others, who say the decision on life support should not be left to a state agency.
Two doctors concurred the girl had no hope of recovery but disagreed on whether she should be removed from a feeding tube in addition to a respirator.
Monteiro’s comments came as the agency investigates its own response to a history of abuse complaints. Although Monteiro told The Springfield Republican newspaper on Sept. 21 that the agency became aware of potential trouble only in 2004, the state Supreme Judicial Court decision written by Justice John M. Greaney states multiple reports involving Haleigh and her two siblings had been filed with DSS as far back as January 2001.
The agency sanctioned the adoption of Haleigh by her aunt, Holli Strickland, in 2001 after removing her from the care of her natural mother following abuse allegations against the biological mother’s boyfriend.
Holli Strickland, who was charged along with her husband, Jason Strickland, with abusing the girl, died in September along with her grandmother in a murder-suicide police believe was executed by the grandmother.
_ George Graham and Azell Murphy Cavaan
Quote of the Day: Ken Smitherman of Association of Christian Schools International
(RNS) “We’re not teaching that water boils at a different temperature.”
_ Ken Smitherman, president of the Association of Christian Schools International, who says the Constitution prevents state universities from denying applicants credit for courses that add a religious viewpoint to “standard material.” He was quoted by USA Today.
MO/PH END RNS
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