Wilberforce Effect

PRISM PRESENTS....

The Wilberforce effect

Human rights activist Michael Horowitz says

to some of Today’s most

pressing Human Rights injustices.

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“IF Y TO BE FEELIN GL FFERIN GS ALIV E TO TH E SU CREATU RES IS TO OF MY FE LLOW M OST AM ON E OF TH E I , C TI NA FA A BE ITTED TO TICS EV ER PERM IN CU RA BLE FA NA BE AT LA RG E.” CE -WILLIAM WILBERFOR

T

he threshold of a new year is a good place to look out over the human landscape, consider the sufferings of our fellow creatures, and plan the shape of our “fanaticism,” as William Wilberforce so ironically defined the term. The 19th-century British statesman has become synonymous with human rights and thus lends his name to a group of human rights injustices that stick out as some of the most significant challenges/opportunities of 2011.

Deeply inspired by William Wilberforce, Michael Horowitz is the director of both the Project for International Religious Liberty and the Project for Civil Justice Reform at the Hudson Institute, a conservative DC think tank. A vociferous advocate for human rights, Horowitz is a Jew who believes that the Christian church is a powerful but underutilized force for human rights; he also believes that a vibrant and revitalized Christianity is the best means available for ensuring that this century is more peaceful than the last. Like his hero, Horowitz maintains a vision that is nonutopian, practical, and inclusive. He works tirelessly to fan flames to combat public apathy about human rights issues and is ferociously determined to build alliances across religious, political, and national borders. We talked to him about what he hopes to do and see happen this year.

PRISM: You’ve identified at least eight major issues and corrective initiatives that, in your opinion, constitute a “Wilberforce agenda” capable of gaining broad support from all points of the American political spectrum. These include supporting internet freedom, assisting Pakistan’s Shahbaz Bhatti, promoting human rights in North Korea, putting the issue of international prison reform on Washington’s radar screen, implement-

ing the Advance Democracy Act you helped to pass, eliminating obstetric fistula and domestic prison rape, and moving Congress and the nation to adopt abolitionist policies towards the mass trafficking of girls and women in the US and around the world. What do all these issues have in common?

Michael Horowitz: They are all supported by leftright, religious-secular, bipartisan coalitions whose members range across the country’s otherwise fierce ideological battle lines. With one possible exception, each involves modest and in some cases no budget expenditures. Most deal with matters now either ignored by US policy makers or treated as low-priority concerns. Together and in some cases singly, they can achieve the rescue of millions of victims. All call for achievable, nonutopian approaches, and all are models that lead the way to comparable human rights initiatives. Each is premised on the idea that the judicious application of American values can enhance American interests, and each can greatly strengthen America’s standing in the world. Critically, each is on a pathway to rapid implementation if the coalitions that support them keep up the fight.

PRISM: How will Wilberforce agenda issues bridge today’s partisan political divides?

MH: The initiatives I am determined to help make happen demonstrate America’s shared values and teach us all that we can work together to make them come alive. They can satisfy the strong desire of most Americans to demonstrate that the “us versus them” ideological gridlock in which the country is now often trapped does not reflect America’s underlying reality. They can satisfy the equally strong desire of most Americans to promote freedom and rule-of-law governance and to peacefully challenge and undermine closed-society regimes.

They reveal a powerful means by which US parties and leaders can earn long-term public trust and achieve what the country sought when it elected President Obama: a clear demonstration that Americans have more in common with each other than either MoveOn.org or the Christian Coalition will acknowledge or wants us to know.

Evangelical Christians and Reform Jews, Democrats and Republicans, human rights NGOs and anti-abortion conservatives, feminist organizations and Tea Party activists will each greatly profit by not merely supporting but by taking matters to the next level and seizing ownership of Wilberforce agenda human rights initiatives.

Treating the issues as high priority concerns will

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not only save lives and peacefully promote American national interests but will also greatly help shatter caricatures in which many groups and leaders are now trapped.

PRISM: How will supporting Wilberforce agenda issues benefit these various political groups?

MH: Among progressives, there’s an increasing tendency to define human rights in ways that reflect domestic, middle-class, and often personal concerns. Whatever their policy virtues may be, abortion rights and gay rights involve beneficiaries quite different from the people whose causes were the traditional focus of American liberalism. Commitment to Wilberforce agenda initiatives on behalf of trafficked girls and women, religious persecutees, and North Korean gulag inmates can thus powerfully strengthen the moral standing of the American left.

On the trafficking issue–the slavery issue of our time and one where the condition of millions of trafficked girls and women almost precisely mirrors the condition of 19th-century African chattel slaves–the American left has been split between modern-day abolitionists and people who believe that “sex workers” can be protected by the legalization of their “work” and by enhanced government regulation of it. On North Korea policy, most Democrats now reject a “Helsinki” strategy that puts human rights issues on the bargaining table; they instead support offering subsidy and legitimacy to the Pyongyang regime in exchange for its weapons reduction promises.

The increasing “realism” of the left’s international and human rights policies and the increasing “idealism” of the right in such matters, all developments of the past decade, represent a reversal of priorities and bode poorly for progressives and the Democratic Party. This growing shift will increasingly undermine the moral credentials and public trust that helped make the Democratic Party America’s governing party for most of the second half of the 20th century. Widespread adoption of Wilberforce agenda initiatives with the commitment shown by such leaders as Ron Sider, Ann Lewis, and David Saperstein can be a critical antidote to progressive political decline– an antidote all the more critical in light of the precipitous downswing in support for progressives that took place in the recent elections. Progressives have long been supported by Americans troubled by their economic policies because of their seemingly greater compassion for human rights. Once that reputation and standing is lost, longlasting political hard times will not be far off.

On the other side of the coin, America’s traditional and identifiably conservative Christian leaders also have much to gain by adopting Wilberforce agenda priorities and by focusing on more than such issues as abortion, pornography, and gay marriage. Identifying Christian concern with Wilberforce initiatives will greatly help define opposition to abortion as being rooted in the desire to protect vulnerable beings and will thus strength-

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en rather than dilute the appeal of the abortion issue even (and especially) with people who don’t believe that a fetus is a vulnerable living being. Priority regard for Wilberforce agenda issues will thus have the double value of rescuing millions of victims and shattering caricatures of the “Dread Christian Right”–an imperative of particular importance for evangelical and traditional Protestant churches, if only to gain and retain the loyalties of young people. Christian leaders like Chuck Colson, Richard Land, and Robbie George understand this–as do such model officials as Sam Brownback and Frank Wolf. They know that the positions of 19th-century Christian leaders like William Wilberforce, William and Catherine Booth, and Josephine Butler on such issues as African slavery, prison reform, and widespread prostitution imbued Christianity with moral authority and were powerful means by which Christian witness shaped and led society.

But their actions and their seemingly singular focus on “hot button” issues often mask this understanding.

Wilberforce issues offer to mainline Protestant, progressive evangelical, and Reform Jewish communities a similarly valuable means of morally engaging the real world without identifying their faiths with one side of such actively debated issues as global warming, corporate governance, tax policy, and welfare reform. A Wilberforce-based set of issues will save lives and sharply reduce the risk of religious faith being subsumed and displaced by politics. Given the increased secularization of America’s Jewish community and the rapid decline of America’s mainline Protestant churches, present identification of religious faith with one side of fully debated policy/political issues will gravely risk causing their congregants to find the Sierra Club and the American Civil Liberties Union preferable substitutes for synagogue and church.

Lastly, on the secular side, the Republican party needs to better understand that Wilberforce issues will help them attract such groups as college students and– of critical significance–women.

PRISM: Let’s talk about the fight for global internet freedom. Why is this so important?

MH: I believe that global internet freedom must become a signature issue for America, because the walls by which 21st-century dictatorships isolate and control their people are increasingly electronic and less stone and barbed wire. Religious observance, cultural and informational exchange, and political dialogue are increasingly taking

TAKE ACTION...

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE REASONS BEHIND THE FIGHT FOR GLOBAL FREEDOM AT INTERNETFREEDOM.ORG.

closed societies in operation for years to come. It is now openly and expressly articulated by senior State Department officials.

If the department chose to do what it is now refusing to do, it would rapidly make possible:

place through the internet–and in ways that strengthen religion, democracy, and overall prospects for peace.

Yet, despite pressure from the media, from Congress, and from others, I believe that the State Department has scandalously failed to do what is in its power to do: use appropriated funds it has been given to rapidly shatter the internet firewalls of the world’s closed-society regimes.

Secretary Clinton’s formal response to a key question put to her by Senator Arlen Specter following a recent Appropriations Committee hearing makes this clear. In the exchange, Senator Specter asked Clinton to comment on the claim of dissident leaders from China, Iran, Burma, Cuba, Vietnam, Syria, and Laos that unspent money available to the department could be rapidly used to provide 50 million closed-society residents per day with unmonitored and uncensored internet access.

That’s 50 million users! Per day! In posing the question, Specter asked Clinton to comment on whether there is “doubt…that systems capable of providing [such] internet service…would, among other things, immediately shatter Iran’s internet firewalls.”

Secretary Clinton did not deny the premise of the senator’s question. Remarkably, and in direct contrast to a major February 21, 2010 internet freedom speech she delivered as an expression of US foreign policy priorities, her response made clear that circumventing closedsociety internet firewalls was not a priority objective of the department. Hard as it may be to believe, her stunning explanation of this position was that doing so would not solve other closed-society internet problems. This position, which the State Department euphemistically calls its “holistic” approach to internet freedom, amounts to an affirmative decision to keep internet firewalls in

• free and interactive communication between the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan followers and interactive worship services conducted by the Pope or evangelical leaders for millions of Chinese house church Christians; • secure communication with closed-society residents, most particularly including Green Revolution dissidents in Iran; • an at-will ability of US presidents to interactively communicate with closed society groups of their choosing–with safety and anonymity; • an at-will and safe access to Western websites by residents of closed societies; and • safe communication to, from, and among residents of closed societies during regime-initiated political crackdowns and cover-ups.

Secretary Clinton’s smashing-firewalls-isn’t-that-important position, the State Department’s decision to classify and thus hide the failed results of an earlier $15 million internet freedom appropriation, the almost two years it has taken the department to process a 2009 $5 million internet freedom appropriation, and the failure of the State Department to ask for any funds for internet freedom in its recently proposed budget make the administration’s record an inexcusable one.

PRISM: What do you foresee happening if the State Department continues in their refusal to support internet firewall circumvention systems?

MH: If the State Department doesn’t act, I expect members of Congress, the press, “Tienanmen 21” arrestees, Iran Green Revolution leaders, Burmese anti-regime activists, and Chinese House Church supporters to engage the issue with passion. And I expect Republicans in the House of Representatives to conduct hearings and to begin issuing subpoenas in order to tell the story of what the administration has failed to do.

I also expect progressive leaders of conscience like the late Congressman Tom Lantos’ daughter Katrina Swett and his remarkable spouse, Annette, to call on their friends and fellow Democrats to turn the department’s policies around.

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A senior administration official anonymously After successful surgery to repair their fistulas, three patients find their acknowledged to the Washington Post what Senator smiles returning. (Photo courtesy of Brownback, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, Worldwide Fistula Fund) and many others have openly alleged: that the State Department’s refusal to support systems that now facilitate internet firewall “circumvention” services for as many as 1 million Chinese users per day (and for almost as many Iranian users) is based on the fear of a “ballistic” Chinese government reaction. Others in the administration, echoing concerns expressed in earlier times about US support for Radio Free Europe and the supply of fax machines to the former Soviet Union, believe that challenging the internet firewalls of closed-society regimes–a process that involves no hacking of computers or computer systems–might lead to cyberwar attacks on US computer systems.

And developers of circumvention systems still being perfected have expressed mistaken “zero sum” concerns that present support for successful systems would dry up future support for their systems.

The peaceful dismantling of the internet firewalls by which the world’s dictatorships isolate and control their • train and assist African doctors, nurses, and other people is an issue of inestimable potential significance to a medical personnel to treat and repair obstetric fistulas; safe and peaceful and secure world. What Voice of • elevate the importance of child and maternal care America and Radio Free Europe did to weaken the hold of and the general medical treatment of women throughthe former Soviet Union on its people will be done–and out Africa; then some–by a clear US commitment to tear down the • set in motion unequivocally committed and locally internet firewalls of the world’s dictatorships. I and others conducted campaigns against forced child marriages, intend to ensure that such a commitment will be made– one of the root causes of fistula; and be made before long. Stay tuned: This will happen, • provide young American physicians with a life-transwhether by a State Department and administration that forming opportunity for service as front line surgeons reverse their current policies or over their objections. This and medical instructors; is a policy battle that cannot, must not be lost!

• create a model program by which a major American university medical center can powerfully expand its reach beyond America’s borders; and PRISM: Tell us about the obstetric fistula initiative, which • put America on the right side of a central hisyou have described as a form of US medical diplomacy. torical development by which the 21st century will be defined–the emancipation and empowerment of MH: Fistula is a condition suffered by millions that causes women. stillbirths and uncontrollable incontinence following deliveries where the fetus has been unable to pass through the birth canal and in places where C-section deliveries The next step for the coalition will be to find senior memhave been unavailable. Members of a broad coalition– bers of Congress from both parties to join Congresswoman including the NAACP, the Southern Baptist Convention, DeLauro in sponsoring the fistula initiative bill they have the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and worked with her to develop. Following that, a national Evangelicals for Social Action–have worked with the summit meeting of leaders of major faith, women’s, world’s leading expert, Worldwide Fistula Fund President African American, and human rights organizations will be Dr. Lewis Wall, to come up with a feasible plan to end fistula’s epidemic scourge. The Take Action... coalition has actively worked with Democratic Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and with othAt WorldwideFistulaFund.org you can help to build a new surgical center in West Africa, to sponsor fistuers on a proposal that I believe will: • rescue millions of presently afflicted African girls and women–and millions more who will be spared the tragedy of fistula in future years;

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la care for a woman, to train a innovative prevention program, or clinical research. Visit the website about how you can contribute to

surgeon, to start an to sponsor exciting today to learn more this life-saving work.

convened to put the issue “on the map” in ways that will be difficult for the political system to ignore. Efforts will be made to gain administration support for the initiative, and efforts will also be made to make the fistula initiative a joint US-UK project.

PRISM: What is your outlook on the fight against human trafficking?

MH: Grave concerns exist about the ability of the present leadership of the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Office to deal effectively with the issue.

There is now a compelling case to rapidly overhaul the office and to replace its director, Ambassador Luis deBaca. The 2010 TIP Report confirmed the fears of many of us about the current state of the anti-trafficking initiative, and the report Courtesy of SAWSO.org was unshirtedly condemned in a letter sent by the New York State Coalition Against Trafficking that many national feminist leaders this must not be permitted to happen to the anti-traffickhave endorsed. At least as troublesome is the fact that ing movement. Just as activist pressure resulted in the the TIP Office has failed to ensure Federal agency com- dismissal of the Bush administration’s first TIP Office pliance with many of the express statutory deadlines and director (and the subsequent appointment of Seattle’s mandates of the aptly named but seriously underenforced former Congressman John Miller, who led the office to 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection extraordinary heights), pressure can and must be applied Act. An office that cannot even achieve compliance with to the Obama administration to dismiss its TIP Office the laws that govern it is certain to be deficient in the director. This is necessary to ensure that the office is performance of its discretionary policy duties–and with taken seriously within the federal government and by forfrequency this has been true of the present TIP Office. eign governments, and it is a step necessary for it to Making the matter critical is the fact that the coming become the agent of historic change it can be. I intend to year is likely to be a make-or-break period for anti-traffick- work with groups from left and right to make public what ing reform. Failure to rapidly and visibly satisfy today’s most leaders now privately acknowledge–that they have high expectations for historic reform will generate a broad irretrievably lost confidence in Ambassador deBaca’s and strong public perception that nothing serious can be capacity to perform the duties of his office. There are many distinguished Democrats who can provide leadership done to eliminate sex and labor slave trafficking.

Can I take a break to offer a word of profound thanks similar to the leadership offered by Ambassador Miller durto PRISM magazine? The stunning beforeTake Action... and-after photos of girls and women brutalized by prostitution that appeared in your Support anti-trafficking efforts such as Love146.org, September/October 2008 issue played a NightLightInternational.com, ChabDai.org, FreesetGlobal. greater role in energizing Congress to pass the 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking com, FAASTinternational.org (Faith Alliance Against Slavery & Victims Protection Act than all the speeches Trafficking), Live2Free.org, GlobalCenturion.org, SAwso.org made on the subject. The pictures taught (Salvation Army World Service), and ProstitutionResearch. and took away the breaths of coalition memcom. bers and members of Congress. They are still being actively circulated, have saved Call your representatives and ask that TIP Office Director many lives, and will save many more.

Luis deBaca be replaced with someone who is willing to Reform movements that lose their enforce the mandates of the 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking momentum after being energized by passions Victims Protection Act, which activists (including ESA staff) like those generated by the PRISM photos worked so hard to put into legislation. invariably lose the capacity to achieve forward progress for many years thereafter–and

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Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti addresses a press conference in Islamabad in September 2010.

(AdilGill/PPI Images).

ing the Bush administration. Millions of lives are at stake in the US and throughout the world, which is why we must ensure that it happens.

PRISM: Why is Pakistan’s Shahbaz Bhatti, founder of the All Pakistan Minority Alliance and now Pakistan’s federal minister for minorities, so important in the fight for religious freedom?

MH: Few public officials offer greater potential in the struggle against religiously based Islamist terrorism than Shahbaz Bhatti. During his career as a religious freedom advocate, Bhatti has been the subject of many fatwa threats–including one prompted by his success in sharply limiting the use of Pakistan’s once notoriously enforced apostasy and blasphemy laws. As Pakistan’s leading lay Christian during the late ’80s and ’90s, he served for many of us–Jews, Christians, and agnostics alike–as a model of Christian witness.

Take Action....

The Institute for Global Engagement (IGE), in cooperation with the University of Science and Technology in Bannu, Pakistan, runs the Global Engagement Fellows Program. The program funds students from underrepresented groups–such as women and religious minorities–through their entire four-year education. The program provides the students with an exceptional opportunity to obtain highly sought-after technical degrees, while exploring a curriculum designed to deepen fellows’ comprehension of the values of peace, reconciliation, and respect for the other that are rooted in their own faith. As the program continues to grow, providing youth with an alternative to the extremism that is ever-present in the region, IGE welcomes dedicated prayer for the program fellows and their studies, as well as monetary support used to sustain and expand current and future programming. Learn more at GlobalEngage.org.

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A few years ago, Bhatti was elected to Paksitan’s parliament and, two years ago–in a miracle of sorts–he was designated as Pakistan’s first minister of minority affairs. Since then, his influence within the Pakistani parliament and cabinet–and with Pakistan’s leading Muslim clerics–has been significant and is growing. He has been publicly praised by the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the European parliament, key US Jewish and Christian leaders, the US International Religious Freedom Commission, key congressional leaders from both parties, Canada’s prime minister, and Italy’s and Britain’s foreign ministers. To date, however, he has not received meaningful recognition or useful assistance from US policy makers.

Last July, Bhatti convened an all-day National Interfaith Consultation that included Pakistan’s four principal imams; other senior Pakistani imams; the heads of Pakistan’s principal madrases; bishops of Pakistan’s Catholic, evangelical, and Baptist churches; and the principal leaders of his country’s Hindu, Sikh, Farsi, Buddhist, and Ahmadi communities. Following the meeting, the participants issued a remarkable statement of principles that condemned religious extremism and terrorism, condemned Al Qeda and the Taliban, and called for nationwide interfaith harmony and national solidarity. The statement received live television coverage when signed, has been much lauded in the Pakistani press and parliament, and belies defeatist pessimism about prospects for progress on the part of Pakistan’s Muslim clerisy. The statement and Bhatti’s continuing leadership on similar matters open up the extraordinary prospect that Pakistan’s imams can serve as the third (and the most important) leg of anti-terrorist policies that to date have solely relied on military and political leaders and have often appeased the most militant Islamic religious leaders.

Bhatti held a summit last fall with Pakistan’s leading madrassa heads to discuss educational reforms designed to alter their status as incubators of terrorism. He is planning a 2011 session at which Pakistan’s president, prime minister, and 3,000-5,000 religious and community leaders will endorse the July 2010 statement of principles. If this event takes place–a development that could be facilitated by informed US support not now present–Bhatti’s role in Pakistan and beyond would be hard to overestimate.

Senators Casey and Brownback and Congressmen Wolf and McGovern wrote to Secretary Clinton on the eve of her June visit to Islamabad; the letter praised Bhatti’s work and called on the secretary to meet with him during her trip. That meeting could not be scheduled, but a successful one did take place between Bhatti and Undersecretary of State Maria Otero–and follow-up meetings are now being considered. I and oth-ers intend to work–and to work hard–to persuade US policymakers to catch up with leaders of the rest of the world in recognizing Bhatti’s importance and potential.

PRISM: Where are we on the issue of prison rape in the with intense opposition from state prison officials and the Department of Justice. The department has made clear US? that it will be at least one year late in meeting an explicit MH: The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) June 2010 statutory deadline for issuing final PREA reguestablished a commission to propose low-cost regulations lations, and has shown itself at best indifferent to designto eliminate the widespread incidence of sexual violence in ing and conducting meaningful state prison surveys. It has America’s prison systems. (The legal basis of the PREA failed to indicate any willingness to link failure to comply was a Supreme Court holding in the Farmer v. Brennan with final PREA regulations with potential liability in case that held deliberate indifference to prison rape a vio- Farmer lawsuits brought by abused prisoners. Critically, it lation of the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and usual has sought to construe the PREA’s requirement for lowpunishment.) Under the PREA, the Department of Justice cost rape abatement standards as a bar against standards was charged with evaluating the commission recommen- that impose any costs, including costs which are marginal dations and then rapidly promulgating prison rape abate- in relation to overall prison budgets. In other words, the ment regulations in such areas as predator isolation, staff Department of Justice has effectively sought to gut the training, whistleblower protection, and the early identifica- PREA. Fortunately, the press–including the Washington Post, tion of likely victims. The PREA also charged the Department of Justice with conducting prison surveys the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal–has that permitted compari sons of the prison rape abatement condemned the department’s PREA delays, conduct, and performances of all state prison systems. After some dif- position–and this has put real pressure on the department ficulties, the commission issued its report in early 2009. to take the PREA seriously. This will be an active and The commission’s recommendations have been met important year in terms of holding the feet of the Department of Take Action...

Justice to the fire on the issue of domestic As this issue of PRISM is going to press, the Department of Justice’s proposed national prison rape. A furstandards addressing sexual abuse in detention, pursuant to the Prison Rape Elimination ther development Act of 2003, are undergoing administrative review, after which there will be a public the likely appointcomment on these proposed standards. If they closely mirror the recommendations ment of the PREA’s of the bipartisan federal commission that originally drafted the proposals, these comlead sponsor, mon-sense measures will be the most important tool to date in the fight against sexual Congressman Frank violence behind bars. To learn how you can add your voice to the call for strong stanWolf, to the chairdards addressing prisoner rape, please join Just Detention International’s email list, at manship of the subJustDetention.org. While you're on the website, check out their Portraits of Courage committee responsifeature, which puts a poignant face on the issue of prison rape.

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Rep. Edward Royce (R-CA) speaks at a North Korea Freedom Day Rally in DC.

ported by other Americans and by the American political system. Thus, while all of us have known the importance of persuading the Korean American community to take up the issue of US-North Korea policy as a signature concern, we have missed the fact that doing so is the central, overriding, and singular end to be sought–that it is the development without which meaningful change in US-North Korea policy will not occur.

Recognition of the State of Israel and later US policies that threatened the former Soviet Union with sanctions if it did not allow its Jews to emigrate occurred in the face of an establishment consensus that those policies were counterproductive. The same was largely true of the campaign to bring down South Africa’s apartheid regime.

America is a country of immigrants and, to the consternable for Department of Justice appropriations augurs well tion of “experts,” US policies have been responsive to for full enforcement of the law and for radical abatement Jewish American, African American, and other immigrant of today’s widespread incidence of sexual assault and vio- communities when they have made their votes and longterm political support contingent on support for the lence in America’s prisons. oppressed people of their “home countries.”

PRISM: Our cover story in this issue is about the human rights disaster that is North Korea. Why is this particular PRISM: So what about the Korean American community? issue so hard to rally folks around?

Are they applying any effective pressure on behalf of their North Korean brothers and sisters?

MH: The most significant Wilberforce agenda failure of the past decade has been the failure to seriously alter the MH: The passivity and indifferenceof the Korean American Bush and Obama administration’s policy towards the community towards North Pyongyang regime. Passage of the North Korea Human Korea resembles that of the Rights Act, issuance of left-right statements from American Jewish community American leaders calling for a human-rights-oriented towards Hitler as he was comapproach to the regime, and assistance given to under- ing to power–and in the Korean ground railroad organizations that rescue North Korean American case is caused by a refugees have not significantly altered the humanrights- mixture of political naiveté, neutral policies of the US. To no significant avail, such career preoccupation, and stamembers of Congress as Sam Brownback, Evan Bayh, tus insecurity. Leaders of the Frank Wolf, Chris Smith, Diane Watson, Dana Rohrabacher, Korean American community and Ed Royce, world leaders like Vaclav Havel and Natan also fear the uncertainty that Sharansky and the Bush administration’s Special Envoy for precedes such bold action, just North Korea Jay Lefkowitz have sought to promote a as Jewish leaders feared the human-rights-based “Helsinki strategy” for dealing with potential rejection of their effort North Korea. Frequent meetings between human rights to promote the emigration of activists and leaders of South Korea’s political, human Soviet Jewry, and as America’s rights, faith, media, and student communities have been Christian leaders feared that a campaign against worldsimilarly unsuccessful. All of those efforts–and extensive wide Christian persecution would not resonate in the media reports detailing the inhuman character of the pews. But those leaders came to see, as would Korean regime–have failed to move US policy away from its core American leaders, that meaningful initiatives on behalf of position of offering support and legitimacy to the regime persecuted brothers and sisters almost always catch fire in exchange for weapons policy promises. with members of their communities and with the country This failure on our coalition’s part has resulted from as a whole. the most egregious of strategic errors: our inability to Worst of all, Korean American leaders, and their relidistinguish between policy means and policy ends. gious leaders in particular, have failed to follow up on Throughout, advocates of a Helsinki strategy for North public pledges they have made to support a human-rightKorea have failed to assign adequate priority to the central soriented North Korea policy. A notable example was the fact that strong calls by Americans to protect their perse- strong October 2008 letter sent to Senator McCain and cuted home country brothers and sisters are always sup- then-Senator Obama by the Korean American Church

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Coalition for North Korea Freedom [“the KCC”], an umbrella group of almost 3,000 Korean American churches and pastors. (Editor’s note: Read the text of this letter on page 13). One week after delivery of the letter, in which the authors solemnly pledged never to countenance US failure to hold the regime accountable for its human rights violations, the Bush administration took North Korea off the terrorist list and then-Senator Obama endorsed the step. The KCC’s response was…silence.

An important means of engaging the Korean American community will be to more fully emphasize the obligation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to take China to binding international arbitration for its widespread deportations of North Korean refugee- escapees. This failure is based on China’s unlawful refusal to bring North Korean refugees before UN officials for refugee status processing, on China’s unilateral act of deporting the refugees to North Korea, and on the imprisonment and torture that follows the deportations. The potential appeal of such a focus is enhanced by the fact that the US is the principal financial supporter of the UN and by the fact that the UN secretary-general is himself Korean. The secretary-general’s silence over China’s treatment of North Korean refugees stands in contrast to his denunciations of human rights violations in other parts of the world. For this reason alone, UN failure expressly defined by the North Korea Human Rights Act as “a significant abdication…of one of [the UNHCR’s] core responsibilities” can, with proper leadership, become a matter of determined grassroots concern to the Korean American community.

The good news is that key community leaders may be ready to assume the risks of leadership and are ready to speak out and take action–a development strengthened by the regime’s mounting economic and succession crises and by the increasingly open internal criticism of the regime reported by such sophisticated observers as Barbara Demick and Chun Ki Won. But having been disappointed by the Korean American community’s silence and timidity, I’m not holding my breath until this happens, and I intend to raise my voice with all that’s in me to move the community to action. That action is long overdue and is a critical step if the community is to earn Take Action...

Read the interview with North Korean defector Jinhye Jo on page 18, then look at the list of advocacy organizations on page 14 and commit to partnering with one or more to help refugees like Ms. Jo. Purchase Restricted Nations: North Korea, produced by Voice of the Martyrs, at Persecution.com: These testimonies of steadfast saints living in a dark nation will give you the strength not only to pray on their behalf but also to live your life boldly for Christ.

respect and stature among its fellow Americans and with its young people.

PRISM: That’s quite an agenda you’ve set. Anything else in the works?

MH: Yes. I’m not getting any younger, and I’m determined to share the many gifts I’ve received before Gabriel blows his horn for me. My immigrant grandfather–probably the great influence on my life–regularly told me when I was growing up never to forget that “America is the blessed land” and that I owed it to others to share my blessings.

Besides, doing what I’m privileged to do–as an escapee from the world of co porate law firms–is fulfilling and energizing beyond measure.

Thus, I’ve been talking to activists and members of Congress about an initiative that addresses so-called “honor killings” and hope to gain traction in making our policies towards Sudan and Darfur shrewder, tougher, less morally promiscuous, and more focused on the failings of Darfur’s rebel groups–in a word, to get the strategic premises of our policies more in line with those of the Sudan Peace Act I worked to pass, legislation that helped end a brutal 20-year war waged by the government of Sudan.

Finally, there’s a reform I believe can be made to happen in less than a year–“Accent on Democracy.” This initiative results from my experience with pro-democracy hero-leaders who come to America but often fail to reach American audiences because their accents and speech patterns make them difficult to understand and often almost unintelligible. How sad this is because, better than anyone else, these often-great men and women can teach Americans about our strengths, opportunities, and obligations to help make a peaceful world for ourselves and for others. I’ve been in touch with the Hollywood experts who teach Meryl Streep how to be Julia Child one day and a Swedish immigrant in her next movie, and they’re excited about building bridges between the American people and Tiananmen 21 designees, Green Revolution leaders, Burmese dissidents, Vietnamese Christians, and Tibetan victims–and are confident they can do so.

Other opportunities are sure to come along in 2011, and I’m exercising, taking my pills, and trying to stick to healthy diets that will allow me to work with others to take them on.

PRISM: Thank you, Mr. Horowitz. May 2011 be a year in which we all work to make our abolitionist ancestors proud of us.

MH: From your mouth to God’s od’s ear.

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