U.S. trades morality for money

Tuesday, January 12, 1999

U.S. trades morality for money

RIGHTS: American allies use strategic importance to get away
with murder

By Arsen Pogosov

Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have a few things in
common. To start with, they are all considered "allies" by the
policy makers in the Clinton administration. They are also all
predominantly Muslim countries. Indonesia and Turkey are "emerging
markets," meaning cash cows for U.S. bankers and defense
contractors. Saudi Arabia is a major oil producer, and Egypt is
essential in the Middle East peace process. In short, these
countries are essential to keeping the United States in the
dominant geo-political and economic position that it is in today.
At least, this is what we are led to believe. These countries are
also blatant violators of human rights.

We are expected to put aside the principles this country was
founded on because it is convenient to shelve such things in the
pursuit of higher profit margins. A short description of the
situation in these respective countries will show that it serves
long-term U.S. interests that we speak out now, and demand reform
and respect for human rights. An ally that shares our values and
goals is priceless, while one which goes against everything this
country stands for does more damage to our credibility (not to
mention justice) than all our enemies combined.

The Indonesian government has massacred hundreds of thousands of
East Timorese ever since Indonesian troops invaded East Timor, a
former colony of Portugal. The Catholic East Timorese population
has been decimated. The Indonesian government is forcing Muslim
settlers from other Indonesian islands to colonize the depopulated
region.

In other words, all the massacred people are being replaced, and
the small, peaceful island is being ethnically cleansed. The
process continues as you read this. What is more outrageous is that
the United States is the largest arms supplier to the Indonesian
government. Most of the weapons being used to exterminate the East
Timorese are "made in America."

Turkey, which killed more than 1 million Christian Armenians and
expelled its entire Greek population earlier this century, is
continuing its policy of genocide. As we speak, Kurds in Southeast
Anatolia are being killed. Why? Because they want to be able to
speak their own language instead of Turkish. Because they want to
end the injustices and discrimination that the Turkish government
is subjecting them to. Because they object to whole villages being
depopulated and razed to the ground, while 2 million of their
refugees live in squalor in the worst sections of Turkish
cities.

It is a classic example of self-determination vs. cruel
oppression. Furthermore, as if it hasn’t done enough damage to
Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians, the Turkish government continues
to discriminate against its Christian minorities. Recently, the
Turkish government (with an accompanying threat of force) tried to
tamper with the election of a new Armenian Patriarch of
Constantinople.

Even more recently, a Greek Orthodox seminary was closed down,
and a Greek Orthodox Church was forcibly converted into a motel.
Talk about separation of church and state!

Torture continues to be common practice of the Turkish police.
Turkey continues to illegally occupy Northern Cyprus, where many
ethnic Greeks and Armenians have been killed. Turkey is blockading
Armenia, denying that country the humanitarian aid the U.S.
government appropriated. Yet policy-makers, still clinging to old
Cold-War mentalities, see Turkey as a major buffer to a
non-existent Russian threat. Who cares about the killings, as long
as Russia is "contained," right?

Saudi Arabia is a special case. Here’s what the most recent
Human Rights Watch report had to say: "The government of Saudi
Arabia, an absolute monarchy, continued to violate a broad array of
civil and political rights, allowing no criticism of the
government, no political parties, nor any other potential
challenges to its system of government. Arbitrary arrest, detention
without trial, torture, and corporal and capital punishment
remained the norm in both political and common criminal cases, with
at least twenty-two executions and three judicial amputations of
the hand carried out by mid-October. Human rights abuses were
facilitated by the absence of an independent judiciary and the lack
of public scrutiny by an elected representative body or a free
press."

The report goes on, stating, "Muslim religious practices deemed
heterodox by government-appointed Islamic scholars and all
non-Muslim religious practices were banned and subject to criminal
prosecution." In other words, it is illegal to practice
Christianity. The Saudi government, in order to placate an Islamic
fundamentalist movement within the country, often fails to
guarantee the safety of its Christian subjects. The same applies to
the Shia population, which the Sunni Arab majority considers
heretical.

The least our government can do is pressure the Saudis to ease
their restrictions; after all, the United States buys and consumes
billions of dollars worth of crude oil, some of which comes from
Saudi Arabia.

The Copts of Egypt, an Orthodox Eastern Christian people, make
up 10 percent of Egypt’s population. Although the Egyptian
government is the most "benign" of the countries listed vis-a-vis
rights violations, it still discriminates against the Coptic
minority.

I have personally read Reuters and Associated Press (AP)
accounts of terrible human rights violations. Copts in prison face
harsher punishments. One man, because he was a Copt, was hung by
his hands so that he had to stand on tiptoes to reach the ground
beneath. He was left like this in his cell for three days. Others
are jailed in inhuman conditions. Even things that can be done,
such as allowing for a bathroom break, are denied to these people
simply because they are Copts. The result, as you can imagine, is
not pleasant.

The Egyptian government does not permit the construction or even
the repair of churches. The Egyptian government also cannot
adequately protect Coptic Christians against attacks by
fundamentalist Muslims who want to transform Egypt into a purely
Islamic country. As recently as the first week of 1999, the
Associated Press reported that a Christian man was killed because
he dated a Muslim woman. Here too, while we should continue to seek
a solution to the Middle East peace process, we should keep in mind
also to pressure governments supportive of the process, such as
Egypt, to clean up their own house. We provide $3 billion in aid
annually to Egypt. Should we not attach some strings to this
money?

A major obstacle to following a foreign policy based on
principles rather than the quick buck is the general ignorance and
apathy of Americans toward foreign affairs.

It is a statistical fact that American students rank among the
lowest in the industrialized world in their knowledge of geography.
While the American people lack the knowledge to follow a just
foreign policy, special interest groups such as the all-powerful
oil lobby are running circles around policy-makers. If we as
university students do not speak out for justice, then who
will?

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