anctuary - Central American same people and not simpiy a common name that appears on the death lists.
Over the past few years thousands refugees and US churches of those opposed to the far right, whether trade-union leaders, political figures, university lecturers, unemployed youth or religious figures have become victims of the death squads.
Sanctuary. Underground railroad. The terms bring up memories of the
This a dilemma for the presents listant past. Centuries ago sanctuary meant a place of worship and
Reagan administration. On the one hand
Those facing political oppression from kings and the it is supposed to encourage the Salvaaristocracy could hide in the churches, temporarily finding safety. The doran regime to make progress on the underground railroad describes the system whereby thousands of Black question of human rights. On the other, secretly brought or escaped from the southern slavery states it is determined to prop it up and aid it to to freedom in the North, in the early 19th century before the Civil War.
defeat the FDR/FMLN liberation forces.
The response of the Reagan administration has been, in the person of vice- president George Bush, to ask the Salvadoran regime to:
transfer abroad military officers and prominent civilians involved in the death squads; end the clandestine procedures leading to arrest
'disappearances'; and take some visible legal action on cases like that of the four
US nuns murdered in 1980, where even the US State Department accuses the
Salvadoran government of a cover up.
10 lace of refuge. Steve ASHBY
Today the terms have a new connotation. Those seeking to escape oppression are not Black slaves, but Central American workers and peasants. They flee not kings, but brutal dictatorships armed by the United States government. The modern-day Abolitionists helping the refugees escape North through the underground railroad are religious activists.
In Central and Latin America, a polarization is deepening in the churches, especially the Catholic Church. Growing numbers of clergy, against the insistence of the pope and other religious author ities, are speaking out for the poor, for human rights, for justice, and against the dictatorships in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. In Nicaragua, this movement, called "liberation theology," has strongly supported the revolutionary process. A number of priests are members of
International Viewpoint 12 March 1984
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N CARABLA GUATEMALA COSTARICA HONDURAS
the government: Minister of Foreign Affairs Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockman; Minister of Culture Father Ernesto Cardenal; and Minister of Social Welfare Father Edgard Parredes.
In the United States, the reflection of this liberation theology is the growing sanctuary movement. As of February 1, 1984, less than two years since it began, the one hundredth church in the United States took in refugees from Central America — refugees who face torture and execution if the US government gets its way and deports them back to Central
Since the military junta unleashed a against the Salvadoran people in 1979, over 40,000 people have
According to Amnesty International, in a letter to then Secretary of State Haig in mid-1981, "Analysis of all available data suggests that the majority of the reported (human rights) violations, including torture, 'disappearance" and deliberate cold-blooded kilings, have been carried out by the security forces, and have been directed against people not involved in guerrilla activities." Thousands flee
The civil war in El Salvador has forced hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans to flee the government terror. national Committee of the Red Cross estimates that 150,000 to 200,000 Salvadorans are displaced within El Salvador. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in the northern Latin American estimates that up to 350,000 Salvadorans have fled to surrounding countries: there are 100,000 or more in Mexico, 30,000 in Honduras, 7,000 to 10,000 in
100,000 to 180,000 in Guate20,000 in Nicaragua, 10,000 in Costa Rica and 1,500 in Panama.
While masses of Salvadorans flee the violence in El Salvador and go to Guatemala, the military dictatorship there has likewise unleashed a terror campaign. Fearful of the Nicaraguan revolution and the gains of the FMLN/FDR in El Salvador, and the examples they provide to the oppressed Guatemalan people, the dictatorship has begun a state of siege. Guatemala notes that the government's counterinsurgency strategy consisted "bombing, shelling, selective killings and in suspected 'subversive villages, combined with a scorched earth policy of crop burning, confiscation of slaughter of calculated not only to deny the guerrillas food but also to force peasants to
The Guatenalan Episcopal Conference estimated in March 1982 that as many as one million Guatemalans were refugees, uprooted from their homes by and that 200,000 or more have left the
As many as 200,000 Salvadorans have fled to the US during the last two years, seeking a temporary refuge International Viewpoint 12 March 1984 violence and terror the Salvadoran government has unleashed. Los Angeles, California, is said to be the second largest Salvadoran city in the world, after San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.
The Salvadoran population has risen dramatically since the escalation of the civil war in El Salvador, rising from about
1979 to 240,000 in 1982. In addition, over 80,000 Guatemalans live in Los Angeles. Other large concentra tions of Salvadorans in the US include:
80,000; New York, 70,000; Washington D.C., 35,000; New Orleans, 40,000; Chicago, 15,000; Texas,
According to the UNHCR, "Much of the violence in El Salvador is politically motivated in order to instill fear and submission into the populace whose political sympathies are suspect. Persons fleeing this kind of violence are bona fide political refugees and not simply war-displaced persons and should under no circumstances be compelled to return."
Nevertheless, the US government considers these refugees "illegal aliens" and denies they face execution if deported. Of course, this is the same government that certifies time and time again that the Salvadoran junta is making "human rights progress." The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has been arresting Salvadoran refugees and returning them to El Salvador at a rate of 1,000 a month.
Even though Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees meet the requirements of the US Code, Refugee Act of 1980, and are recognized by the United Nations as refugees deserving protection, the State Department refuses to grant
Of the 10,743 applications by Salvadoran refugees in 1981, for example, only two
In the 1982 fiscal year, only 74 applications were granted, and tens of thousands of applications still
Salvadoran refugees are boarded on planes bound for the Ilopango airport in El Salvador, where their flight is met by the Salvadoran militiary. Many deportees simply disappear. Western Airlines was under contract from the US government to deport refugees, but protests forced Western to withdraw from the deportation business. Now, apparently, US military planes are used to deport refugees.
The hypocrisy of the State Department's position is exemplified by its handling of refugees from such countries as Cuba or Poland. For its own anticommunist reasons, the State Department has declared a moratorium on deportation of Poles. According to Marc Van Der Hout, director of the Central American Refugee Program of the Most Holy Redeemer Church of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, "The Salvadorans have the best case for political asylum I've ever seen. The denials show the political nature of the government's attitude toward them. If they were Russian ballerinas or Romanian tennis players, they would have no problem."
The smuggling of "illegal aliens" into the United States by mercenaries, known as "coyotes," is a familiar story. What is new, beginning nearly two years ago, is the involvement of American churches
As of February 1, 1984, 100 local religious congregations in 23 states have declared themselves public sanctufor Salvadoran and Guatemalan Over one thousand congregations have endorsed and are publicly supporting the sanctuary movement. 100 sanctuaries
On March 24, 1982(1) the Reverend John Fife, pastor of Tucson, Arizona's Southside United Presbyterian Church, led his congregation in declaring his church a safe haven for a family of Salvadoran refugees. Since that time a rapidly increasing number of churches have joined this new underground railroad, establishing a network of safe houses, relays and sanctuaries for Salvadorans WEET and Guatemalans who have fled the civil war in their country and managed to enter the United States illegally. the sanctuary movement began in Tucson, that city is more of a stopping house on the way to cities that have a larger concentration of Salvadoran refugees, such as Chicago. The Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America coordinates the sanctuary movement nationally. congregation that commits itself to being a sanctuary provides food, shelter, clothing and medical assistance until the refugees can become self-sufficient. They help find jobs for them, arrange school enrollment for their children, and help them adjust to life in the Unied States
So far, the movement has directly involved Roman Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Quaker, United Church of Christ, Mennonite, Methodist, Lutheran and Unitarian churches.
It has been endorsed by regional and national bodies of major denominations,
March 24, 1982 was the second anniver sary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero by rightist death squads in El Salvador.
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and has won strong support from two Roman Catholic Archbishops, Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee mond G. Hunthausen of Seattle.
Activists in the sanctuary movement see sanctuary as a direct way to challenge the US government's policy in Central and to offer protection for its victims as well. Further, the presence of refugees in the church gives the refugees themselves the opportunity to offer living testimony of the war's effects.
Refugees in sanctuary speak frequently to other church congregations, high schools, colleges, women's groups, etc. Their first hand accounts of the torture and repression handed out by the Salvadoran and Guatemalan military juntas often inspires listeners to oppose US intervention and involvement in Central speaking last year his Wellington Church of Christ opened its doors to a Salvadoran family, passionately summed up the driving force behind the sanctuary
"We live in a time of encroachment...a violation of the holiness of even the most basic of human rights. A demonic domination has been unleashed that is profaning the human through torture and terror. It is time to provide a safe place and cry out, 'Basta! Enough! The blood stops here at our doors!' "
There is no legal basis in the United for a church to declare itself a sanctuary, nor is a member of the clergy exempt from laws against smuggling and harboring "illegal aliens."
The thousands of religious activists involved in the underground railroad for Central American refugees face a fine of Victims of the death squads (DR) 12
2,000 US dollars and a five year sentence in a Federal penitentiary if caught.
So far, no church activist has been
"smuggling," and the INS has refrained from raiding any churches. No doubt the government is mindful of the amount of bad publicity that would ensue if such an attempted raid were to occur. Duke Austin, speaking for the INS nationally, would not speculate on INS action toward churches if the movement grows. If "it [sanctuary] got to a large proportion, we might change our present policy...which is that INS does not apprehend by entering homes,
Since Austin made that the number of churches giving sanctuary has doubled, and is growing at a rate of one or two a
As Leon Ring, chief of the Border Patrol's Tuscon sector has said, take action if we encounter these people on the border or on the highways. They will not be treated any differently than anyone else."
The political impact of the sanctuary movement is positively sage of a "sense of Congress resolution" calling on the Administration to grant ex tended voluntary status to Salvadoran ref-
While passage of the resolution is good, it does not bind the Reagan administration, which undoubtedly will not implement it.
Clearly the Reagan administration is not pleased with the rapid growth of the sanctuary movement, and its effect on to the government's Three White House staff POR SUBVERSI VOS LOS SALUDA
&SCUA people are now assigned full time to "interpret" the US policy in Central America to the religious community, and the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism just held hear ings on "The influence of Communism in liberation theology."
In January of this year, nine anti-war activists in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, involved in both the solidarity and sanctuary movements were questioned by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents about alleged connections to "smuggling terrorists into the country" No arrests have been made, but the intent of the harassment is to intimidate activists in the anti-war and sanctuary movements. Link with antiwar movement
Father Dick Sinner, a Roman Catholic priest in Tucson who has been active in the movement, has said, "Almost every moral issue is political and every political issue is moral, and to make a judgment that you don't get involved in these issues is to avoid a very important element of our ministry, to me at least.
"This is no different from what the German people had to do when they smuggled their Jewish friends out of the country into Italy and into Holland, Denmark and Norway to avoid the Nazi oppression. If our government is wrong. if our government is doing things that are immoral and unjust in the name of law and order, and we see that it is immoral, we have a duty to challenge that law."
Or, as Tucson Quaker Jim Corbett
"You can overemphasize the kinds of risks we're taking by helping
We only face a jail sentence. day people down there face death every
On June 12, 1982 a million Americans marched on New York City to protest the escalating nuclear arms race. While the focus of the march was to protest nuclear weapons, thousands of banners and placards demanded "US Out of Central America" and "No More Vietnam Wars." Since the invasion of Grenada, the death of 249 Marines in Lebanon, the showing of the television film "The Day After" about the effects of nuclear war, and Reagan's escalating threats against Nicaragua, there has been a growing discussion in the anti-nuclear weapons and peace movement on the need to get more actively involved in the anti-intervention movement.
Thus far, recent demonstrations protesting US intervention in Central America and the Caribbean, such as March 27, 1982 and November 12, 1983 have not gone beyond the size of 50,000.
This pales next to the massive June 12 demonstration. While all polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose US military intervention in Central America, the polls have not been translated into numbers in the streets. The million people that came out June 12 have not been organized to join the antiintervention movement.
International Viewpoint 12 March 1984