Freedom House VII: Interfaith Panel

Those who would prefer not to discuss what the North Korean regime is doing to its own people have sometimes advanced silly and sometimes fevered arguments that human rights advocacy is either a neocon (meaning Jewish) conspiracy or an evangelical enterprise. One author even managed to say both at once, focusing his attack on none other than Natan Sharansky:

Who is Mr. Sharansky? He was a Jewish dissident in the former Soviet Union, which former President Ronald Reagan defined as “the evil empire.” The Brezhnev administration naturally arrested Mr, Sharansky. While he was in prison, the neo-cons of the Reagan administration pulled the former Soviet Union into the arms race, including the “Star Wars” program, which required an astronomical budget and drove the country to collapse. Human rights organizations across the world, including Jewish-Americans, put pressure on the Gorbachev administration. . . . His suggestion that Islamic terrorism can be wiped out by spreading democracy in the Middle East shook the minds of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and the neo-cons . One of the hidden purposes with which the neo-conservatives in Washington started a war against Iraq was to democratize the Middle East and build a condominium that the United States and Israel could jointly manage.

I’ve already responded to that theory, which seems to suggest that nice Jewish boys are trying to make North Korea safe for Baptist missionaries, with all the seriousness it obviously merits. As a wiser man once said, “you cannot reason a man out of what he was not reasoned into.” Depending on your perspective (and whether you’ve taken your medication), Freedom House’s interfaith forum may either refute or support this theory. One thing will be clear, however: putting an end to the imprisonment and gassing of children is a cause that has ecumenical appeal.

Freedom House chose four religious leaders and one NGO leader to represent what is undoubtedly a strong religious force behind making an issue of human rights (I don’t regularly attend any synagogue, but I’d confess that at some conscience-driven level, that’s also true for me). In addition, the Reverend Tim Peters, who has been directly active in helping North Korean refugees survive their escapes from North Korea, hosted a panel of defectors.

I’m rooting for Rabbi Cooper to make a big impact for a number of reasons, including the fact that I’m told that my e-mail traffic with him after the North Korean gas chambers were exposed contributed to him becoming active on this issue. Cooper is the kind of speaker who starts in a low gear, grabs command of he audience, and then raises the pitch of his speech and the power of his rhetoric. I will simply list some of his best lines:

• It is an axiom to the Jewish people that silence is acceptance.
• I know that the people of North Korea can hear what we say, so let me be blunt: The United Nations, the [International Committee for the Red Cross], the international NGOs, . . . we have all failed you.
• [Motioning to a chair that was placed apart from the others] This is the seventh seat in the six-party talks. We by our presence here commit to schlep this chair to the table for the long-suffering people of North Korea. [Some of the impact was lost, unf, when another panelist sat down in the chair(!)].
• The key to change is the Korean family, particularly young Korean-Americans. By their presence here, young Korean-Americans have proven that given the chance, they will step to the forefront.
• Let us put the “N” back in “Never again!”

Rabbi Cooper spoke of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which was tasked with the investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals for years after World War II. He called for the South Korean government to form its own OSI equivalent, stating that when the North Korean officials know that they will be held accountable, the response will be “behavior modification.”

Deborah’s card says, “Hometown of President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.” Fikes spoke at a rally at the Chinese Embassy in April, and her organization, which reportedly has access to the White House, has been a growing presence in this movement. Ms. Fikes and her husband became missionaries later in life, after her husband left his career as a petroleum engineer. Fikes, a powerful speaker, is awovedly and unshamedly evangelical in her outlook, yet spoke of how different faiths have found common ground on North Korea. During her relatively brief remarks, Fikes asked:

What if the international community had approached Hitler, focused only on security? What if the allies had focused only on Hitler’s military? We would be living in a different world today.

Grieboski admitted to not being a particularly spiritual person himeself, but is obviously passionate about protecting others’ freedom to worship (in North Korea, Christians are subject to summary execution). Going a step beyond Sharansky’s words, Grieboski said:

It is not enough for the international community to have moral clarity. The world religious community must stand up as one and say, ‘This cannot happen!’

Of all of the organizations present, the Southern Baptist Convention, with 16 million members, is easily the most powerful. Land’s address threw their weight behind bringing attention, focus, and pressure to human rights conditions in the North.

• This ignoring of basic human rights must end.
• I speak for the overwhelming majority of 16 million Southern Baptists, as well as 30 million evangelicals.
• Any regime that commits acts of terror against its own people is, by its very nature, a threat to us all.
• We must apply a Helsinki model to our negotiations with North Korea [tying specific human rights improvements to any aid or trade benefits with free nations]. Negotiations must always include discussions of human rights–at the highest levels. In our discussions with other nations, such as China and Russia, financial assistance must also be linked to human rights in North Korea.
• It should not be sufficient if the [North Korean] regime does no more than agree to curb its nuclear arms. It must also agree to end its acts of terrorism and atrocities against its own people.
• We call upon the entirety of the civilized world to insist that these atrocities toward [North Korea’s] own people end.
• Other governments that aid and abet this regime must cease to do so, or else we will insist on restrictions such as those in the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. It will give us no pleasure to do so, but we will.

The latter statement was clearly a direct threat to place the power of the Southern Baptist Convention behind trade restrictions on North Korea, and perhaps on its trade partners as well.

This was my favorite speech of the entire day, in large part for reasons I may not succeed in describing–the way this man exuded energetic and sincere compassion as he spoke. It wasn’t necessarily that he was a great speaker; he was simply the one who reached the highest level of emotional energy without losing the appearance of complete sincerity in my eyes. It was more than this alone, though, and I fear that this will take some explaining.

Once, before I became cynical and jaded about, well . . . people who exude compassion about pretty much anything, I envied the men in the tweed jackets with elbow patches and expressive gestures who wanted to free Leonard Peltier, end the death penalty, and represent the Illinois Nazis all the way throught the Court of Appeals–pro bono, of course–to defend the greater principles of the First Amendment. I was captivated by the contradiction of intelligent and gentle men mustering such righteous compassion for such perfect scoundrels. Something so incongruous and enthusiastic must be essential to saving democracy for the next generation.

This is the part where I become cynical and jaded: I started reading about the Soviet Army gassing Afghan villages and dropping booby trapped toys into the ruins of said villages, of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians fleeing to Thailand, of half a million boat people streaming out of Viet Nam, of dissidents imprisoned on Cuba’s Isle of Youth or exiled to Murmansk. When it came to defending victims far more innocent and numerous, the men with the elbow patches, the expressive gestures, and the bottomless wells of compassion always seemed to be absent. The style lost its seductiveness when the substance–the compassion–was so often misdirected. “Why can’t you use your powers for good?,” I would wonder, “instead of fretting over genetically modified tomatoes, or cat juggling, or the confidentiality of Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s library card?”

And yet, because I nonetheless believed that the compassion of liberals was both sincere and in many ways beneficial to a better society, I’ve never accepted “liberal” as a term of derision. I’ve mostly found myself mourning the potential liberalism lost along with its sense of perspective.

Rabbi Saperstein is the liberalism with perspective that I’ve longed for . . . the conviction, the gestures, the rising passion in the voice, the eloquence . . . why, I could swear he even had the elbow patches. I mean, just listen to what the man said–proudly and repeatedly declaring himself a liberal in a room that was probably three-fourths conservatives, and just as unafraid and unashamed to make common cause with a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, and an Evangelical missionary and friend of W:

• I stand here as a Jew on behalf of human rights in North Korea because I cannot be anywhere else. It is the historical lesson of the Jewish people that we must defend the innocent from persecution.
• As a liberal, I cannot stand aside, because as a proud liberal, I stand for justice for all people everywhere.
• I can think of no time the United States entered into negotiations about arms control without addressing fundamental human rights.
• [The issue of forced repatriations] is something that China can deal with in a matter of days. China’s actions are unconscionable.
• We must not remain silent. We cannot remain indifferent when aid is given to a regime and millions of people starved to death, and when aid was distracted and misused.
• The Red Cross must have access [to the concentration camps].
• In the past, the world stood idly by. It must stop. Never again will the people of the world stand idly by while the people of North Korea suffer. We will continue to pray for their day of justice and freedom. Let us pray that day comes soon.

I had once spoken somewhat bearishly about Rabbi Saperstein being made U.S. Special Rapporteur for human rights in North Korea. This is an appropriate time for me to retract that opinion.