Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good friend, Chairman Royce, for his leadership on this bill, the markup, and for the very timely recommendations he and staff made to improve it.

I would like to thank Eliot Engel again for working hand in glove in a good, bipartisan effort to protect international religious freedom.

As my good friend, Chairman Royce, noted a moment ago, 18 years ago Congress had the foresight to pass the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. That landmark bill, authored by Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia, made advancing the right to religious freedom a significant and profoundly serious U.S. foreign policy priority.

Passage of the International Religious Freedom Act was not easy. There were determined opponents in Congress and in the Clinton administration. I know. I chaired the congressional hearings and the subcommittee markup. It was no cakewalk.

But our opposition was overcome by the courage, tenacity, and vision of Frank Wolf, bolstered by a diverse, bipartisan, and ecumenical coalition of Members of Congress, ethnic minority and religions groups, and human rights organizations. That coalition has reassembled to support this bill today, the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act.

I want to especially thank Anna Eshoo, who is the principal Democratic sponsor of this legislation, for her leadership and for working particularly in the Middle East to combat the savagery that is being imposed upon people of minority faiths, including Christians.

I thank her for her leadership and, again, for being the principal Democrat on this bill.

Let me just note that naming this bill after Frank Wolf, who I consider to be, and many of us consider to be the William Wilberforce of modern times, is an attempt to recognize his extraordinary life's work promoting human rights, 34 years as a Member of Congress, including, and especially, religious freedom.

He now serves as the Wilson Chair at Baylor, again, continuing his lifesaving work for religious believers all over the world.

He just returned from Nigeria and testified at our hearing last week. He was in the embattled states in northern Nigeria, where Boko Haram runs free, massacring people. He was there on a fact-finding mission to promote religious freedom.

Mr. Speaker, the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act that is before us is a series of upgrades to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

We know that the world is experiencing an unprecedented crisis of international religious freedom; a crisis that continues to create millions--no, tens of millions of victims; a crisis that undermines liberty, prosperity, and peace; a crisis that poses a direct challenge to the U.S. interests in the Middle East, Russia, China, Sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere in the world.

The Pew Research Center notes that over 75 percent of the world's population today lives in countries where severe religious freedom abuses occur annually. According to Pew, instances of anti-Semitism are at a 7-year high. It is getting worse everywhere, particularly in the Middle East, but also in Europe and in the United States.

Mr. Speaker, ancient Christian communities in Iraq and Syria are on the verge of extinction, and other religious minorities in the Middle East face a constant assault from the Islamic State.

Several weeks ago, this Congress passed a resolution, sponsored by Jeff Fortenberry, that was followed by a declaration by Secretary of State John Kerry, that said that ISIS has committed, and continues to commit genocide, mass atrocities and war crimes against Christians, Yazidis, and other minority faiths.

We are on record. We know it is happening. We are speaking out.

In a couple of weeks, I am chairing a hearing on what is next; what should we be doing next to combat this terrible, terrible crisis.

In Nigeria, the Islamist terror group, Boko Haram, is believed to have killed over 6,600 people last year alone, mostly Christian, but there are Muslims as well who are being targeted. According to the testimony we received last week, since 2009, the number is about 15,000 year to date since 2009.

Mr. Speaker, at one of those hearings a few years ago, I had a man named Habila. Habila, I met him at an IDP camp in Jos, Nigeria, where a lot of churches have been firebombed. He told me this story. He was credible, and it checked out. And he came to Congress and testified.

Boko Haram put an AK-47--a terrorist--to his jaw and said: Renounce Christ or I will kill you. You must become a Muslim on the spot.

Habila said: I am ready to meet my Lord.

And this terrorist pulled the trigger and blew most of his face away.

What courage, what faith for a man. And when he told the story, you could have heard a pin drop.

Mr. Speaker, the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom just released its 2016 annual report. And let me note, parenthetically, USCIRF, or that Commission, was also created by Chairman Wolf as part of IRFA, the original bill.

They have found that the abuses committed by governments and non- state actors has ``deteriorated.'' ``The incarceration of prisoners of conscience''--they point out--``remains astonishingly widespread . . .''

They point out that ``Over the past year, the Chinese government''-- as just one of many examples--``has stepped up its persecution of religious groups''--across the board: Tibetans, Uighurs, Muslim Uighurs, Christians, and, of course, the Falun Gong.

I spoke in mid-February at NYU, I gave a keynote there in Shanghai, and talked about how Xi Jinping, the President of China, is in a race to the bottom with North Korea to make religion absolutely subservient to the Communist Party. He calls it the sinification of religion; and what was already a bad situation has now become demonstrably worse.

The Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act will upgrade the tools so that this administration, and subsequent ones, can do an even better job to try to mitigate and, hopefully, end religious persecution. It does this by, one, requiring that international religious freedom policies be integrated into national security, immigration, rule of law, and other relevant U.S. foreign policies.

It creates a Designated Persons List of individuals sanctioned for participating in or directing religious freedom abuses.

It expands diplomatic training on international religious freedoms for all State Department diplomats; creates a tier system for IRFA, for the reports, not just countries of particular concern, of which there are currently 10, but also those that are on a watch list, those that are bad and, perhaps, getting worse.

It gives the President authority to designate non-state actors in addition to countries; and it also requires the Ambassador at Large to report directly to the Secretary of State.

It also is increasingly clear that religious freedom diplomacy is really needed to advance U.S. interests around the world. This will do it.

The legislation is backed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the International Religious Freedom Roundtable, a diverse and ecumenical group of individuals from the faith community.

Finally, just let me thank Scott Flipse, who worked for Frank Wolf previously, then he worked for the International Religious Freedom Office at the State Department, and now is working at the China Commission; our General Counsel, Piero Tozzi; Janice Kaguyutan, I thank her for her work on this; and Sajit Gandhi. This is a true, bipartisan piece of legislation and, hopefully, the Senate will favorably receive it.

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