Four Days in Rio

March/April 1998 As the plight of persecuted Christians is making world news, the fourth world congress on religious liberty, held last summer in Rio de Janeiro, couldn't have come at a better time.

"Because Christians and people of all faiths are being persecuted the world over," said John Graz, secretary-general of the International Religious Liberty Association (IRLA), which sponsored the congress, "our meeting confronted very crucial and timely issues.

With more than 400 delegates representing 30 countries, the June 22-26 meeting, titled "Facing the New Millennium: Religious Liberty in a Pluralistic Society," dealt with the threats to religious freedom in the increasingly pluralistic and tribalistic world left in the wake of the Communist collapse in Europe and the former Soviet Union. Between breakout sessions and large meetings, everything from the growing threats to religious freedom in Russia (it was during the congress that the Russian Duma passed a draft of a law restricting freedom that eventually, in another form, was signed by Boris Yeltsin) to the persecution of Scientologists in Germany were discussed. In fact, responding to the news from Russia, delegates wrote and voted upon a statement expressing concern about the proposed law in Russia, calling it a "step reversing progress made with the adoption of Russia's Law on Freedom of Belief of 1990."

Though unable to attend personally, Carlos Saul Menem, the president of Argentina, sent a statement expressing his reaffirmation that "a pluralistic society cannot and should not be indifferent to religious and moral values." Iris Resende, Brazilian minister of justice, gave a speech at the Congress, and the president of Brazil, though unable to attend, sent a meaningful message of encouragement to the work of the IRLA and the cause of religious freedom in general.

Keynote speeches included one by Professor Roland Minnerath of the University of Strasbourg, who warned that despite the advances made in many areas, the question of religious freedom remains open-ended. "Certainly the fate of religious liberty," he said, "will depend in the next millennium on the fate of liberty at large. We know how delicate this area is, especially when we consider that freedom in society is a relatively recent conquest that is not yet even achieved in many parts of the world."

United Nations special rapporteur on religious intolerance Abdelfattah Amor warned about the dangers that religious extremes pose to religious liberty in a pluralistic world.

"No religion," Amor said, "is free from violations of religious freedom. In order to preserve the right to peace and international security, the intolerance of religious extremism must be stopped." Amor said that "even in religions like Buddhism, which preach pacifism, we can see a growing extremism.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the four days in Rio was a hearing committee in which representatives from various religious groups gave at time compelling testimony that even as the twentieth century comes to a close, the world still has a long way to go in the area of religious freedom. The committee heard reports on religiously motivated violence in Dagestan, in which a

Seventh-day Adventist couple were murdered in the streets, on anti-Protestant violence in Chiapas, Mexico, as well a powerful report by Scientologists in Germany, who have been facing systematic, government-inspired harassment. Numerous other groups, from a minority Buddhist sect in Japan to African sects in Brazil, all testified to examples of religious harassment.

The International Religious Liberty Association is among the oldest human rights organizations and it has worked for religious freedom around the world for most of the twentieth century.

And as the four days in Rio showed, its work will need to continue into the next century as well.

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