The New York Times

Tuesday, July 22, 1997

U.S ASSAILS CHINA OVER SUPPRESSION OF RELIGIOUS LIFE

RESPONSE TO CAPITOL HILL

Report on the Persecution of Christians Also Criticizes Proposed Russia Curbs

BY Steven Erlanger

WASHINGTON- July 21 - in its first comprehensive review of persecution of Christian groups around the world, the United States Government sharply Criticizes China for suppressing religious worship and urges President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia to veto legislation restricting religious freedom there.

The State Department report, due to be issued on Tuesday and made, available to The New York Time, was prepared at the behest of Congress, which last years demanded "a detailed summary of United States policies designed to reduce and eliminate today's mounting persecution of Christians throughout the world."

The report, which covers, 78 countries, concentrates on difficulties faced by Christians but broadens its mandate to address, at least briefly, the persecution faced by others, Tibetans in China - or the forced conversion to Islam of animists, as well as Christians, in the Sudan

Congressional Republicans have been using the issue of persecuted Christians as a way to criticize the Clinton Administration's policies toward China and Russia, most recently in the debate over renewing normal trade status for China.

Unlike the yearly human rights reports, which also address religious persecution, this report tries to describe actions taken by the United States to promote religious freedom and to "eliminate religious discrimination, intolerance and persecution throughout the world, with a particular focus on the situation for Christian, as requested by Congress."

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has also instructed American embassies to give more attention to questions of religious freedom in their reports and to stay more closely in touch with leading religious figures, both those at risk and others around the World.

A Senior Administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, expressed discomfort at the mandated focus on Christians alone, as did some of the 20 members of the Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, which Secretary of State Warren Christopher established in November 1996.

The advisory, committee which includes members of most major faiths, was established as a response to growing criticism by Christian groups most of them conservative, and similarly minded representatives in Congress.

Nina Shea of the human-rights group Freedom House has joined with other Activists, like Michael Horowitz of the conservative Hudson Institute, to press the issue with conferences, articles and lobbying.

Ms. Shea said the report "is a very good thing, and it underscores a serious human rights issue that has been overlooked." Anti-Christian persecution "is massive and vastly unreported," she said.

"But few Christian Americans even know about it," she said, adding that no President or Secretary of State has ever given a major speech about it.

"There's a bias among some of our political elites, that if you are willing to die for the Bible, you're a fanatic, but if you die in front of a tank, you're a hero," she said. "The great lesson absorbed by the tyrants of the world from the collapse of the Soviet empire is that it was the churches that contributed to the democratization and -collapse of the empire. So you see a pattern of persecution in places like China and Saudi Arabia."

Groups concerned about Chinese persecution of Christians - and the country's forced abortion policies have been a new part of the coalition that pressed for revocation of China's -normal trading status with the United States, with the lead taken by the Family Research Council and its president, Gary Bauer.

Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, wants to make this new report an annual event, and Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Representative Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, both Republicans, have sponsored a bill that would create a white House office to monitor religious persecution, with power to impose sanctions. Its director would be confirmed by the Senate.

While the bill is considered unlikely to pass, it reflects the concern about religious persecution in a post-Soviet world that the Administration is moving to embrace. Senior officials say conflicts based on religion, whether in Bosnia or Northern Ireland, are of increasing importance, and they readily acknowledge that in countries like China, religious persecution is severe.

In China, the report says, constitutional promises of religious freedom are regularly violated. "The Government of China has sought to restrict all actual religious practice to Government-authorization and registered place ship," it says.

While enforcement is uneven, and religious groups - both registered and unregistered - have grown rapidly, China has cracked down this year on unregistered Catholic and Protestant movements. It has raided and closed down several hundred groups that worship in members' homes, detaining, group leaders for long interrogation and beating some of them.

Four underground Roman Catholic bishops have been imprisoned or detained, and many Catholic priests have been searched and religious articles seized. The official Catholic Church registered with the Chinese Government does not recognize the authority of the Pope, so Vatican-affiliated Catholics are considered unregistered.

In response, the American Government says it has raised religious freedom issues at every opportunity in bilateral meetings at every level, sometimes raising specific cases of incarcerated Christians. The President, Vice President and Secretary of State have met the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

Recently, the Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, John Shattuck, met with the Chinese director general of the religion bureau of the State Council, Ye Xiaowien, who was in the United States on a private visit, to discuss these issues.

In Iran, the report says, official oppression of evangelical Christians increased in 1996, while four Bahais remain in prison under death sentences, convicted of apostasy. In Israel, Jehovah's Witnesses have been harassed and attacked, and they and the Unification Church are banned in Singapore.

In Saudi Arabia, freedom of religion does not exist, and the Government prohibits the public and private practice of all non-Muslim religions. American criticism is steady and includes protests about the religious police and their efforts to accost foreigners. The report says that privately run religious services, attended by both American Government employees and other Americans, are held regularly on the grounds of "at least one U.S. diplomatic facility in Saudi Arabia."

In Russia, the Administration is concerned over new legislation restricting religious freedom there for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union. The legislation, passed by huge majorities in the legislature and awaiting Mr. Yeltsin's signature, Would restrict religions not registered 15 years ago, in the Soviet era, when the official ideology was atheist and religious activists and dissidents were persecuted.

Under the legislation, full rights would go to Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Russian Orthodoxy, which is the state religion, while Baptist groups that worked with a state-sponsored organization would be acceptable. But independent Baptist groups, for instance, along with groups like the Mormons and Pentecostals, would not be, because they were not registered; they would not be able to own property, publish literature or hold public worship.

The legislation is intended to crack down on evangelical sects and cults. After oppression and infiltration by the state in the Soviet era, the Russian Orthodox Church feels vulnerable to this new attack by well-financed foreign churches and sects, said the Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, secretary for ecumenical and external affairs of the Orthodox Church in America and a member of the advisory committee.

While not supporting the law in all its details, Father Kishkovsky said that "the overall pattern is not unique to Russia, but exists in other post-Communist countries," including Poland and Latvia. He added, "Closed societies becoming open become confused by the influx of new religious groups."

President Clinton, officials say; has raised concerns about the law in many recent conversations with Mr. Yeltsin, who says that there may be constitutional problems with it. But some kind of new religion law is expected to be passed in Russia, Father Kishkovsky said.