Defending the Faiths

MANY OF today's foreign policy challenges-from Russian weakness and Iraqi aggression to Balkan instability and the rise of China-were anticipated during the waning days of the Cold War. One issue, however, has taken the foreign affairs community completely by surprise: global religious persecution.
A worldwide report by two British researchers, Kevin Boyle and Juliet Sheen, notes, "Religious persecution of minority faiths, forcible conversion, desecration of religious sites, the proscribing of beliefs and pervasive discrimination, killings and torture, are daily occurrences at the end of the twentieth century." The victims include Christians, Buddhists, Baha'is, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and animists. The perpetrators include communist governments (China, Laos, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea), Islamist regimes (Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan), other Islamic states under pressure from militants (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Algeria), and authoritarian regimes such as Iraq, Serbia and Burma.