hearing transcript (pdf - 690 kb) - House Foreign Affairs Committee ...

8
I want to especially thank our very distinguished Ambassador
John Hanford for assuming that very important role. He is doing
a tremendous job.
I want to note that Tom Farr, who serves with Ambassador Hanford
and is also an expert in the field of religious freedom, you and
your whole staff are on the job, you are working hard, and we are
very much appreciative for the good, fine and valuable work that
you do.
Let me remind my colleagues, though, and there are always little
turf battles within the State Department. The Ambassador-at-
Large for Religious Freedom, the legislation could not have been
clearer about this, as the Ambassador is to be the principal adviser
to the President and the Secretary of State. We made that very
clear. I chaired the Committee hearings and the markup of that
legislation. We wanted you to be the point person, and I hope that
is indeed happening because you are the eyes and the ears of this
Administration when it comes to religious freedom issues. We certainly,
collectively and bipartisanly, want to make that point, because
that is what we intended when we enacted that legislation.
I will remind Members that it was very hard getting that bill
passed. The previous Administration was against it. Secretary of
State Albright and John Shattuck and others made the point that
if we passed this into law, it would set up a hierarchy of human
rights vis-a-vis religious freedom and all other human rights, which
was absolute, unmitigated nonsense. We made the point then, and
it is as valid now as it was then, that human rights have been the
stepchild, an asterisk very often at the bottom of a page. When the
obligatory discussion on human rights would occur, it would be, oh,
yeah, religious freedom, let me just say a word about that, if it
even made it as an asterisk. We wanted to catapult it into a place
of prominence.
I remember making the point to Assistant Secretary Shattuck,
that when Congress led the fight on the whole area of apartheid
and sanctions against South Africa, we said racism is so bad in
South Africa, we need to have a special law that focuses on that,
and sanctions was a viable means to that end. Yes, it elevated it,
but it didn’t set back any other human right. It just said we need
to focus here on that. The same goes true with Jackson-Vanik,
which led to the rescue of so many Soviet Jews, which again even
risked a superpower confrontation in order to effectuate the release
of so many refuseniks in Russia, or then the Soviet Union.
So I just want to say to you, whatever we can do as a Congress—
and the leadership of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has been extraordinary.
Throughout this last 107th Congress, on every issue of human
rights concern she has been there, and her staff doing a marvelous
job. We are all behind you and look forward to your testimony and
working with you going forward.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much. If you wanted to continue
to talk nice about me, I would give you more time, but you
have run out.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
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