Today, representatives of foreign tyrannies and some of their victims will crowd together in a congressional hearing room presided over by Congressman Chris Smith (R.., N.J.), chairman of an international-relations subcommittee. What brings together this remarkable gathering is Congress鈥檚 annual review of the State Department鈥檚 newly released Issued every year since the Carter administration, this is an extensive and detailed compendium, hundreds of pages in length, that systematically describes the human-rights policies and practices of every country in the world.
The reports owe their importance to the fact that they are the official record of the status of worldwide human rights as documented by the United States government. They are read and relied upon for a variety of reasons by government offices, and also by those in the private sector, including the media, investors, businesses, civic-society organizations, teachers, as well as ordinary individuals. They are also read closely by the foreign governments under study.
This year鈥檚 document reflects a monumental effort on the part of the State Department鈥檚 Bureau on Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and the hundreds of Foreign Service officers who did the drafting. It scrutinizes friends and foes alike.
The section on China, 64 pages long, doesn鈥檛 mince words about the untold numbers of political and religious prisoners there. Here鈥檚 one example: 鈥淥n July 7, Protestant Pastor Cai Zhuohua, his wife, and two other relatives were convicted of operating an illegal business, stemming from their large-scale publishing of bibles and Christian literature without government approval. Cai and two family members were sentenced to three years, two years, and 18 months in prison, respectively, while a fourth defendant was released after the trial for time served.鈥� Another: 鈥淒uring the year there were reports of persons, including Falun Gong adherents, sentenced to psychiatric hospitals for expressing their political or religious beliefs. Some were reportedly forced to undergo electric shock treatments or forced to take psychotropic drugs.鈥� The imprisonment of people as diverse as Internet webmasters to Catholic and Tibetan nuns is detailed.
Nor do the reports gloss over an increasingly violent and chaotic situation in Iraq. Here is just one of the many examples provided: 鈥淐hristians in Basrah reportedly were forced to pay protection for their personal welfare. Women and girls reportedly often were threatened for not wearing the traditional headscarf (hijab), assaulted with acid for noncompliance, and sometimes killed for refusing to cover their heads or for wearing western-style clothing.鈥�
With respect to Saudi Arabia, the reports find there is 鈥渘o religious freedom,鈥� 鈥渘o right to change the government,鈥� 鈥渁rbitrary arrest,鈥� 鈥渄enial of fair public trials,鈥� 鈥減olitical prisoners,鈥� and a catalogue of other horrors.
Well-known atrocities, such as the genocide in Darfur in western Sudan, are covered in the reports, but so are obscure ones 鈥� such as the activities of the Lord鈥檚 Resistance Army in Uganda. Regarding the latter, a roving band of marauders that preys on children, the reports relate that, since it was founded in the 1980s, the group has kidnapped an estimated 38,000 children to serve as fighters, porters, and sex slaves. The LRA is responsible for an estimated death toll of 200,000 from fighting and disease and the displacement of two million Ugandans. These figures are identical to those given in updates for the Darfur genocide, yet the Lord鈥檚 Resistance Army has received scant international attention.
There is always room for improvement in any undertaking of this size, and I will be among those presenting testimony at today鈥檚 hearing that 鈥� in the main 鈥� criticizes the reports and points up information that was overlooked in them. But overall, these shortcomings are relatively limited and should not obscure the fact that this publication has become indispensable to the study of international human rights.
This annual exercise 鈥� the State Department鈥檚 issuance of the "Country Reports," and the congressional hearings that review them 鈥� is uniquely American. No other nation produces anything comparable. It powerfully communicates, to the whole world, that the American people are not indifferent to acts of genocide, torture, unjust imprisonment, religious persecution, and other human-rights violations, wherever they may occur.