DATE: Thursday, September 4, 1997           TAG: 9709040393

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A8   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   96 lines

CHRISTIAN COALITION DECIDES TO ENTER NEW TERRITORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The Christian Coalition is taking on the issue of international human rights, lining up alongside Amnesty International on one of the most difficult issues in American foreign policy.

It's new territory for the coalition and the first significant policy initiative by Don Hodel and Randy Tate, the group's new leaders.

A human rights official welcomed their involvement, calling the awakening of evangelical Christians to the human rights issue a key development in the debate.

Although there has been progress, especially in Russia, nations around the world routinely imprison and oppress followers of certain religions. Christians and Muslims alike are killed in the Sudan, believers in Baha'i are oppressed in Iran, and Christians are persecuted in China.

Hodel, a former Reagan Cabinet member, and Tate, a former Washington state congressman, described religious persecution as their No. 1 priority. They called last week for a new White House office to combat the problem, a suggestion already contained in a bill by U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a Republican from Winchester.

Hodel said, ``Today millions of people of faith around the world are being killed, tortured, raped, maimed, sold as slaves and more, for no reason other than that they are Christians, and Muslims because they are Muslims, and Jews because they are Jews.''

Hodel cited President Ronald Reagan's stand on human rights, but he also mentioned a Democrat, President Jimmy Carter, who tried to push human rights more forcefully into foreign policy.

Steve Rickard, director of Amnesty International's office in Washington, welcomed the coalition's attention to the problem.

``The bottom line is, whatever the exact numbers are, we fully support the Christian Coalition's view that religious persecution is a huge problem in the world today,'' Rickard said.

Human rights is thorny because it clashes with the basic principle of national sovereignty - that each nation has the right to direct its own affairs.

In certain extreme cases, such as Somalia or Bosnia, humanitarian action is one of the principal reasons for U.S. involvement. But it's impossible to use American military force every time.

Much of the time, the only other tool available is trade. This is commonly called ``linkage'' - if other nations want to buy or sell goods in the United States, that relationship is linked to human rights.

Critics charge that the Clinton administration has ``de-linked'' human rights from trade and is too timid about using its trading power to end oppression.

Rickard said, ``I've characterized this administration as a `yes, but' administration on human rights. Yes, they say all the right things, yet when it comes down to taking a stand they say, `But, we have all these other issues.' ''

Coalition officials said American industry has equal responsibility.

Tate quoted A.M. Rosenthal at The New York Times - a figure not often mentioned at the coalition: ``The altar must stand higher than the cash register.''

``The business community can't just concentrate on their own bottom line,'' Tate said. ``They need to think about what's happening in those countries. And we want to work with them.''

To those who say that if you push other countries too hard on human rights you lose the ability to cause any change at all, Tate said, ``I don't think those arguments would have lasted long with the Holocaust. These issues need to be raised, they must be raised.''

Why now?

``You don't have to look any further than the fact that 160,000 Christians were martyred in 1996,'' Tate said. ``This is probably the most under-reported story today. It still hasn't gotten the attention of the public.''

The Wolf bill would create a new White House office on religious persecution and give it the power to monitor and even sanction other nations. It would also centralize the effort to provide asylum to people of faith escaping those countries.

Even if the bill dies, Tate said, that won't end the coalition's efforts.

``If the leaders are not acting, where is it written that the rest of us are absolved from responsibility?'' he said. ``You truly have lives in the balance here.''

Although it seems like a safe issue, a strong stand on human rights carries some risk for the coalition: American industry, for instance, could be alienated by the message; and there's no guarantee the coalition's membership will consider it equally important.

Rickard said the coalition's interest is part of a trend.

``One of the positive things about the growing interest of the evangelical community in human rights issues is that it has the potential to broaden and strengthen the human rights movement,'' he said.

``I think this is a doorway that I would hope and trust Christians all over the U.S. would walk through. And once they have begun to focus on all the persecution of Christians around the world, their faith will lead them to work on all the oppression going on.''

Rickard said he became involved in human rights in college, a small Methodist school in Michigan, when he read about missionaries being tortured in Brazil.

``That was an epiphany for me, realizing that torture and abuse were alive in the world,'' he said. ``And it's a very natural thing that the human rights cases which touch you first are the ones where you can imagine yourself in their place.''

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu