European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - April 22, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes columns Anthony Lewis Law group has endorsed the tyranny in China Why Are some people who ordinarily would be Quick to deplore repression so reluctant to hold China s tyrants to account is it cultural condescension a feeling that chinese suffering does t matter As much As it might elsewhere or a cynical calculation that one must stay on Good terms with the old men clinging to Power in that great country the questions Are raised again by a particularly sorry instance of winking at the horrors in China. This week the world peace through Law Center will hold an International conference of lawyers on such subjects As human rights and constitutions. The conference which begins today is in Beijing. It would be hard to imagine a less appropriate place for such a meeting. China today is in the grip of the repression that followed the crushing of the democracy movement last june. The conference will explore ways to bring the world under a the Rule of but the chinese people live today under what is not a the Rule of Law a in any meaningful sense. It is a system of arbitrary Power. After the massacre in Tiana men Square last june the communist party listed five new political crimes punishable by imprisonment or death. Among them is a propagandized activity supporting the spread of Bourgeois liberalization. A people charged with such vaguely defined a a crimes Are tried in circumstances that presume their guilt. The trials Are often held in secret. Thousands have been detained without any trial and the . State department reports that detainees have been beaten and otherwise mistreated. Among the specific subjects for discussion at the conference is a judicial Independence especially from political and other governmental the co Host of the conference is the chinese supreme Peoples court a which has emerged As an agent of the government. Last june 20, the court instructed All higher courts and military courts to hold Quick trials of people charged with pro democracy activities a and punish them severely. It told the judges to study a june 9 speech by Deng Xiaoping describing the democracy movement As a violent counterrevolution. The president of the supreme Peoples court Ren Jinxin said last month that reports of abusive treatment of detainees were a deliberate fabrications by Western and in a speech to the National Peoples Congress he accused critics of a Wanton interference in the exercise of judicial Power by a Sovereign the Beijing conference was originally scheduled to be held last August. The sponsors at first said they would go ahead despite the june massacre but later announced a postponement. The lawyers committee for human rights in new York urged that the conference be moved from Beijing. Its director Michael Posner told the world peace through Law Center that China so Gross human rights violations made it questionable that a conference on the Rule of Law should be held there a under any alternatively Posner suggested that representatives of International human rights organizations attend the conference and take part in a planned panel discussion on human rights. The Center rejected that idea. Its officials made Clear Posner said that no discussion of any country so internal affairs would be permitted at the conference a so participants will not be allowed to mention human rights violations in China. The moving Force in the world peace through Law Center is Charles s. Rhyne a former president of the american bar association. I attended an Early meeting in Athens in 1963, and i know How devotedly Rhyne has worked on this subject. But his Devotion has evidently closed his mind to the realities of China today a and to How the chinese government will use this conference. The hard liners in control of China know that popular discontent has sharply increased. They will therefore seize on any evidence of foreign approval to bolster their legitimacy. One of the leaders of last Springs student movement Chai Ling has just escaped from China and reached Paris. She told Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post that when president Bush sent his official emissaries to Beijing the government exploited the action a to try to make people believe that the june killings had never taken place that we made it the Bush emissaries she said a became part of the governments disinformation c new York times George will religious Freedom also carries responsibilities the supreme court is not obligated to Tutor americans in their nations premises. Still last week Justice Scalia passed up an Opportunity to make the most philosophically illuminating Case for a supreme court ruling that underscores the subordinate place of religion in the american polity. Two Oregon men both native americans were fired from their jobs and denied unemployment benefits because they ingested the Hallucinogen peyote As a traditional sacrament of the native american Church. Oregon Law bans All use of peyote which is made from Cactus. The men argued that this violated the first amendment ban on Laws a prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Citing precedents running Back to the 1879 court ruling affirming the constitutionality of Laws Banning the mormon practice of polygamy Scalia wrote a we have never held that an individuals religious beliefs excuse him from complying with an otherwise valid Law prohibiting conduct the state is free to of in 1972, the court held that a member of the old order Amish religion was exempt on free exercise grounds from complying with Wisconsin Law requiring parents to Send their children to school until age 16. Scalia a argument that this 1972 ruling is compatible with the principle he now asserts is unconvincing. However Scalia joined by chief Justice Rehnquist and justices White Stevens and Kennedy of Connor concurred in the result but not the reasoning is Correct on this Point the court has often held that the right of free exercise does not relieve a citizen of an obligation to comply with a a valid and Neutral Law of general application a Law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs on the ground that the Law proscribes or prescribes conduct that his religion prescribes or proscribes a note the word Justice Blackmun joined in heated dissent by justices Brennan and Marshall changes plausibly that the court has now overturned precedents pertaining to the constitutions religion clauses. The court has indeed often asserted an indissoluble link Between some religious conduct and belief and has required government to satisfy exacting tests about a a compelling interest before allowing Laws to interfere with religiously motivated conduct. Scalia should have forthrightly said that the 1972 old order Amish decision was mistaken. A Central purpose of americans political arrangements is the subordination of religion to the political order meaning the Primacy of democracy. The founders like Locke before them wished to tame and domesticate religious passions of the sort that convulsed Europe. They aimed to do so not by establishing religion but by establishing a commercial Republic capitalism. They aimed to submerge people s turbulent energies in self interested Pursuit of material comforts. Hence religion is to be perfectly free As Long As it is perfectly private a Mere belief a but it must Bend to the political will Law As regards conduct. Thomas Jefferson held that a operations of the mind Are not subject to Legal coercion but that acts of the body Are. Mere belief said Jefferson in one god or 20, neither picks ones pockets nor Breaks one s legs. Twenty three states and Federal Law exempt the religious use of peyote from prohibitions and Scalia indicates sympathy for that policy. However he rightly insists it is not constitutionally obligatory. If he says some religious conduct is thus disadvantaged that is a an unavoidable consequence of democratic at least government As Locke jus tidied it. And says Scalia it a must be preferred to a system in which conscience is a Law unto itself. Loc saw that danger in religiously riven Europe. The founders favored religious tolerance Mccau religious pluralism meant civil peace a a Erv the Scalia is following the founders when he limits of constitutionally required tolerance of exercise in the idea that a society is court my Archyp when it Abandons the principle f 1879 ruling a Laws Are made for the go Emmen if conduct arising from belief not just. Itself is exempt from regulation that would p a every citizen to become a Law unto himself. Scalia a position is not Only sound Conse Yati it is constitutionally Correct it is the intent of the r ers. C Washington Post writers group
