The following item is a companion piece to the Washington Post article on
US nuclear energy in China.
My experiences with US policy at the NPT has convinced me that one of the
biggest problems we face is that of language. Our diplomats converse in
"Kissinger-speak" which is all about big powers and the entente cordiale
and nothing at all about democracy.
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October 21, 1997
ON MY MIND / By A.M. ROSENTHAL
Shatter the Silence
On Sunday afternoon, after I had seen the two videos, I thought that
if only God had a sense of packaging He would put them back to
back on one cassette. Then He would drop them on the heads of all
people who can worship in freedom but are indifferent to the suffering of
those who cannot.
One video shows the overriding power of the new American value,
international trade -- and the decreasing influence of the values that had
made America particular. To recall, among them was the belief in the
universality of the right to freedom of religion. The other video shows
determination by some Americans never to forget that.
The video I saw first was made by Boeing, a delighted account of its
increasing airplane sales to China. Boeing reports proudly what else it did
for Beijing to make China strong.
At one of the China-Boeing meetings in Beijing, a company executive
tells how Boeing organized an American lobby to get the lowest possible
tariffs for China -- the most-favored-nation treatment.
First, he says, Boeing called on the hundreds of companies that sell it
supplies to lobby politicians for those tariffs, in person and through a
letter campaign.
Moving up, he announces that Boeing then organized America's major
companies to lobby President Clinton and former Senator Bob Dole,
successfully.
The Boeing folk do not say why many Americans fought those low tariffs
-- including Mr. Clinton during his first campaign. They wanted to link
lowering tariffs with lowering of Communist repression of Chinese and
Tibetan human rights.
That kind of unpleasantness, persecution, is not mentioned. The closest
approach on the video is Henry Kissinger saying that Americans tend to
take a missionary approach to international affairs and that he does not
approve.
It was the American missionary zeal for freedom that inspired the
underground railroad to rescue American slaves. It led to legislation that
opened America's doors to Jews and Pentecostal Christians of the Soviet
Union. And it saved at least some Jews from Hitler.
Boeing officials proclaim that China and America have much to teach
each other. For instance, the Chinese now make so many Boeing parts,
one executive says, that when Boeing planes fly to China, why, they are
going home. The reaction of workers in those obediently lobbying supply
companies is not discussed, nor what America must learn from China.
The second video is about religious persecution of Christians around the
world: the attacks on Christian bodies and churches in Pakistan, Egypt
and Iran and the enslavement, yes, enslavement, of Christians in the
Sudan.
And of course it deals with the decades of imprisonment, torture and
perpetual harassment of Christians in China who refuse to worship
where, when and how they are commanded by Beijing's atheistic religion
supervisors and religion police.
The video is called "Shatter the Silence" and was made by Christians
who have been trying to do that for years. It is part of the prelude to
Nov. 16, the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church,
which will be observed in churches across America. For information
about the video and the Day of Prayer: (888) 538-7772 or
www.persecutedchurch.org.
On this video, an Egyptian Christian girl tells about her sister -- raped,
abducted and forcibly converted to Islam in a marriage from which she
never escaped. Then she says with complete assurance that when one
person prays, God may not hear, but when many, many people do, then
certainly He will hear and help.
Still, Christian groups preparing for the Day of Prayer hope it will be
followed by actions -- individual and church actions toward strengthening
a growing national movement against religious persecution abroad, and
support of legislation like the Wolf-Specter bill in Congress.
The bill calls for fairly mild penalties for persecuting Christians and other
worshipers -- banning American loans and non-humanitarian aid to guilty
nations. But it is fought by the business lobby that Boeing helped create
as if it were the devil's own work.
And to Beijing and its American servitors I suppose it is, because it is an
embodiment of a message from an Iranian Christian heard on the Day of
Prayer video: the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference
JOHN KLOTZ
http://www.walrus.com/~jklotz/
885 Third Avenue, Suite 2900
New York, NY 10022
(212) 230-2162
(718) 601-2044