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IS U.S. NO LONGER THE DEFENDER OF HUMAN RIGHTS?

By Carroll Cox

Sudanese Catholic Bishop Max Gassis said it like it is in an interview with Erik Baptist for Insight magazine: "Western nations are not defending their own ( loudly professed Christian) values."

Maybe it's because we are complacent, well-fed and free to attend the church of our choice, our Christian fortitude and campassion never tested beyond a missed paycheck or the opportunity to give a donation. In the modern West, the very idea of being tortured, imprisoned or killed for your faith is an alien concept, as obsolete as the horse and buggy.

But the Christians of southern Sudan know all about defending their faith. During the 18 years of struggle between the Muslims of the north and the Christians of the south, two million Sudanese have died, millions are homeless and an unknown number sold into slavery or seized for indoctrination. Their schools and hospitals and meeting houses have been destroyed by a Muslim government intent on either converting the 'infidels' to Islam or wiping them from the face of the earth. Clearly tolerance for diversity is not an option.

All this, and barely a blip on our television screens.

Almost the entire international community joined in outrage against South Africa, imposing economic sanctions until it abandoned apartheid which the world saw as a violation of human rights. Professed concern over human rights violations led to military intervention in Kosovo and Bosnia and saturation coverage of the "monster" Milosevic.

Why then, Bishop Gassis asks naturally enough, are Western politicians and the media so silent about the genocide, ethnic cleansing and ongoing slavery trade in women and children taking place in Sudan? A United Nations survey in 1995 confirmed that at least 10,000 children had been seized from their Christian and animist parents in southern Sudan and confined in 20 Islamic indoctrination camps. In a report following his ousting from Sudan by the Khartoum Islamic government, U.N. Human Rights official Gasper Biro wrote: "The whole range of human rights universally recognized have been violated. Summary executions, arbitrary arrests, systematic torture, detentions without trial, slavery, religious persecution."

Why then, so little outrage?

Such limited information and publicity?

Where is our concern for human rights violations?

The answer can be summed up in two words.

China and oil.

A little history is in order here. Though Islam is the majority religion, Christian roots were established in Sudan in the 6th century. In the 7th century, the Christians were overrun by Arab invaders and religious and ethnic divisions and struggles have existed ever since. According to Bishop Gassis, Sudan for centuries has been a "multiracial, multicultural and multireligious country," despite all efforts to impose a government blanket of Islamic fundamentalism.

For 18 years the conflict between the northern Muslims and southern Christians has been deadlocked. But the discovery of a lake of oil beneath the south has changed the balance of power.

China's state-owned oil company is helping to pump 200,000 barrels of crude a day from the south and is building a series of munitions plants for the Muslim regime. Returning U.S. missionary Brad Phillips, who was interviewed in Insight, brought back evidence that the Chinese are now directly involved in helping the regime destroy the Christian farms beneath which the oil flows. Phillips has tried in vain, as has Bishop Gassis, to meet with the U.S. State Department to seek help for the beleaguered Christians. The Khartoum regime is already armed with helicopters from Russia and cluster bombs from China. Now the Russian Federation has signed an agreement with the National Islamic Front government to build a T-62 tank-assembly plant for the regime. Phillips and Gassis say if the U.S. doesn't intercede soon, it will be too late for southern Sudan. With the Muslim dictatorship financed by a steady flow of new oil money, the south's dream of a democratic government seems to be receding daily.

Sudan's black Christians are being wiped out systematically, village by village, Phillips told Insight.

It can't be said that the West isn't aware of the atrocities. The United States has withdrawn its diplomatic personnel from Sudan, has frozen its assets in this country and placed Sudan on its list of countries that harbor terrorism. In June of this year the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation by a 422-2 vote that forbids foreign oil companies doing business in the Sudan from selling stock or other securities in the U.S.

Those are token actions.

There are several reasons U.S. reaction is so mushy:

(1) The five oil companies doing business with the Muslim regime are: China National Petroleum Company, Ludin Oil Corp. of Sweden, Talisman Energy of Canada, Totalfina of France and the Malaysian state oil producer Petronas.

Canada is our largest trading partner and the biggest source of imported oil. Muslim Saudi Arabia is our third largest source of imported oil.

(2) In mid July, the world press announced a history-making new friendship between China and Russia, the basis of their new alliance being their opposition to the proposed U.S. missile defense system. With the world's two other largest powers faced off against us on this issue, how much further is the U.S., salivating for a cozy economic relationship with China, willing to risk its ire?

(3) The business press discussed the probability of China's entrance into the World Trade Organization with nary a mention of that country's human rights violations documented in international courts. Early on, President Bush the Christian made a few weak statements about not supporting China's entry until it improved its human rights situation and toned down its threats against Taiwan. But as the business press said, his objections seem to have faded away under pressure from multinational business interests intent on expansion in the world's largest labor market.

But little people can apply pressure too, if there are enough of them. Sudan is the current site of the bloodiest and most vicious atrocities on earth. By not speaking out and taking a stand, the U.S. as the symbolic voice of liberty and we as individuals, are denying every cherished value of human dignity and opportunity that this country ever stood for.

I am sending a copy of this article to my congressmen and the President. I urge all readers, Christian and others who place human values above economics, to contact their own elected officials and demand public information on and condemnation of, the Sudanese genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Since economics appear to be the reason for U.S. timidity to date, let us turn it around and use economics as the method of intercession. Economic sanctions not only against the Sudanese government, but sanctions also against ALL countries doing business with it.

With your help, the Bush Administration will be forced to begin restoration of the moral and ethical values this country once represented to the world.

E-mail is not as powerful as regualar U.S. mail, send your letters to:

President George W. Bush

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

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