{"id":4041,"date":"2006-03-16T10:07:14","date_gmt":"2006-03-16T10:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/human-rights-and-wrongs.html"},"modified":"2006-03-16T10:07:14","modified_gmt":"2006-03-16T10:07:14","slug":"human-rights-and-wrongs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/human-rights-and-wrongs.html","title":{"rendered":"Human Rights and Wrongs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In NRO, Nina Shea on today’s hearing on the State Department’s annual report on human rights around the world:<\/a><\/p>\n

Nor do the reports gloss over an increasingly violent and chaotic situation in Iraq. Here is just one of the many examples provided: \u201cChristians 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

With respect to Saudi Arabia, the reports find there is \u201cno religious freedom,\u201d \u201cno right to change the government,\u201d \u201carbitrary arrest,\u201d \u201cdenial of fair public trials,\u201d \u201cpolitical prisoners,\u201d and a catalogue of other horrors.<\/p>\n

Well-known atrocities, such as the genocide in Darfur in western Sudan, are covered in the reports, but so are obscure ones \u2014 such as the activities of the Lord\u2019s 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\u2019s Resistance Army has received scant international attention.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Suppression efforts in one Chinese region:<\/a><\/p>\n

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This time, however, the policemen do not dare bend the rules.  An internal police contact revealed to the priests that \u201cthe government has made up its mind to destroy the underground church of Hebei,\u201d the region with the greatest number of Catholics.  \u201cThis time,\u201d the contact says, \u201cthe government wants to isolate him completely: you will become a flock without a shepherd.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Zhengding\u2019s Church has suffered a long series of arrests over recent months:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Finally, via Jen Ambrose, Hong Kong Bishop Zen’s response to a Reuter’s interview with an official with the Chinese Patriotic Association. <\/a>PDF file. Sorry. But good strong stuff and worth a read!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In NRO, Nina Shea on today’s hearing on the State Department’s annual report on human rights around the world: Nor do the reports gloss over an increasingly violent and chaotic situation in Iraq. Here is just one of the many examples provided: \u201cChristians in Basrah reportedly were forced to pay protection for their personal welfare.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHuman Rights and Wrongs - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/human-rights-and-wrongs.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Human Rights and Wrongs - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In NRO, Nina Shea on today’s hearing on the State Department’s annual report on human rights around the world: Nor do the reports gloss over an increasingly violent and chaotic situation in Iraq. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}