The New York Times

September 12, 1997

Abroad at Home

ANTHONY LEWIS

The Wrong Signal

BOSTON. If there is one person in the world who best symbolizes human resistance to tyranny, it is the Chinese prisoner Wei Jingsheng. Alone, he has challenged the most powerful tyranny on earth - and been willing to pay the fearful price it exacted. For advocating democracy in China, he was imprisoned for 14 years and is now serving another 14-year sentence under brutal conditions.

In his courage, Wei Jingsheng speaks for the values of freedom that we Americans assert in the world and aim to protect. But if influential forces in Congress, have their way, this country will soon tell the world that he and his cause matter less to us than another concern: religious persecution.

That would be the effect of legislation called the Freedom From Religious Persecution Act. Supported by fundamentalist and evangelical Christian denominations, it was endorsed this week by the Republican leaders of the House and Senate and seems headed for passage.

The bill would set up an Office of .Religious Persecution Monitoring in the White House, independent of the State Department. Whenever the office's director found religious persecution in a country, regardless of other foreign-policy concerns, economic and other sanctions would automatically come into force against that country.

Anyone claiming to be a victim of religious persecution and seeking asylum in the United States would be given priority in consideration by our Immigration authorities. The victims of torture, threatened assassination, female genital mutilation and other horrors would get shorter shrift.

Making religious persecution the paramount concern in our law of human rights would send a signal to other governments that we care less about such things as genocide, political repression and racial persecution. It would also tell the world that we now favor what we in this country

have always opposed: the idea of a hierarchy of fundamental rights.

Asian autocrats such as Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, seeking to justify their repression, have advance the notion of "Asian values." To Asians, they said, a full stomach and an orderly society are more important than freedom of speech and other human rights. The U.S. stand against that destructive proposition would be undercut by a law indicating that some rights are more important, to us than others.

The legislation reflects genuine and growing American concern about religious persecution in the world. The Chinese Government's restriction on Christian worship except in approved churches has drawn particular attention.

But as drafted, the bill would most likely make the U.S. Government less effective in combating religious persecution and in pressing more broadly for human rights. And it would complicate our foreign policy.

Consider Saudi Arabia, for example. A recent State Department report on religious discrimination in the world included a blistering section on Saudi Arabia. The director of the proposed new office in the White House could hardly fail to find that the Saudi Government engages in religious persecution.

The result would be to impose economic sanctions on Saudi Arabia and, among other things, subject its diplomats to intensified visa checks. Would that advance the cause of religious tolerance in Saudi Arabia?

China already presents daunting problems for Americans who want to advance human rights. Would there be a better chance of Wei Jingsheng's release from prison - and of a general easing of repression - if the United States denied most-favored-nation trading status to China? Or make political freedom follow increasing economic freedom? The questions are hard, and they would be made harder by a one-dimensional focus on religion.

The doubts about this legislation are increased by the f act that conservative Christian groups, including the Christian Coalition, are its strongest though not only backers. Of course their concern for persecuted Christians in the world is sincere. But they undoubtedly have another object, too: to advance their cause of giving religion a prime role in the American political structure.

Considering only the declared object of the bill - the desirable end of fighting religious persecution in the world - the means are mistaken. It is an attempt to impose a simple, mechanical solution on a complicated problem: a recipe for unintended consequences.