Boston Globe, July 25, 1997, Editorial

This week's State Department report on the persecution of Christians around the world performs a useful function insofar as it exposes the oppression of believers under diverse regimes. The act of compiling such a report also expresses the solidarity most Americans feel for people anywhere who are prevented from practicing their religion or injured for praying to their divinity.

In accordance with a congressional mandate, the report pays particular attention to the persecution of Christians under the vestigial Communist regime that rules China. ``The government of China has sought to restrict all actual religious practice to government-authorized religious organizations and registered places of worship,'' the report notes, illuminating the political and totalitarian quality of Beijing's intolerance for any independent religious authority.

Because of the political basis for religious intolerance in China, Beijing's persecution of Mahayana Buddhists in occupied Tibet has been particularly brutal. In Tibet, the Chinese destroyed 6,000 monasteries, many with irreplaceable libraries. Nuns and monks have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed for their beliefs. Beijing's cynical efforts to select successors to the most exalted figures in Tibetan Buddhism, the Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama, reflect a conqueror's disdain for the spiritual uniqueness of the Tibetans.

Equally deserving of solidarity are persecuted Muslims in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, Christians and animists in Sudan, Buddhists in Vietnam, and Muslims in war-torn Bosnia. The Enlightenment idea of tolerance should extend to all victims of religious persecution, not just one branch of human spirituality.