wfn.org | United Methodists join rally for law linked to human rights

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March 23, 2000      News media contact: Joretta Purdue ·(202)
546-8722·Washington     10-21-31-32-33-34-71BP{164}

NOTE:  Photographs will be available with this story.

WASHINGTON (UMNS) -- Hundreds of activists from around the country,
including two members of Congress and several United Methodists, gathered on
the front
steps of the Supreme Court March 22 to support a law related to human
rights.

The court was hearing arguments in a case challenging a Massachusetts
"selective
purchasing" law, which had been struck down in a lower court.

At issue is the Massachusetts Myanmar (formerly Burma) Law, which gave
preference for state purchases to companies that do not do business in
Myanmar because of that country's human rights abuses. About 600
corporations, acting as the National Foreign Trade Council in Massachusetts,
challenged the law, and a lower Massachusetts court threw it out. A
subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court led to the hearing.

The Women's Division of the Board of Global Ministries filed an amicus or
"friend of the court" brief in November. The action was preceded by
resolutions on economic justice that had been passed earlier by the
denomination's General Conference, the highest legislative body of the
church.

"We signed on to the friend of the court brief because we believe that
states and cities, and we as United Methodist Women, have the privilege of
using the power of withdrawing our support from countries where human rights
violations are so numerous," said Sarah S. Shingler, president of the
Women's Division, and a participant in the prayer-service portion of the
rally.

The Rev. David M. Schilling, a United Methodist who is an executive at the
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, was at the rally with
representatives of some of the center's 275 Protestant, Catholic and Jewish
member organizations. He sees parallels between what Massachusetts is trying
to do with the challenged law and the pressure that U.S. groups brought to
bear on South Africa's old apartheid government. 

"We tried to make the moral case that they (companies) withdraw," he said.
"It's the same issue with Burma." Corporations must consider what impact
doing business with an outlaw country could have on their company.

Although the military junta that rules the Southeast Asian country permitted
national elections in 1990, it has not allowed those elected to take office
and has imprisoned many of them.

"The human rights violations in Burma are truly horrendous," Shingler said.
"According to reports from the United Nations, every day men, women and
children are working as slaves, without pay, to build roads for the
government and the army. Women, many of them in their teens, because of the
political situation there and because of the poverty, are being used as
porters for the army. Many of the women are raped in the evening hours by
the soldiers."

Shingler, who noted that the Women's Division and the related United
Methodist Women have a 125-year history of being "advocates for the
dispossessed, especially women and children." She also spoke of other human
rights violations in Myanmar, telling of the 40,000 women sold into
prostitution each year.

In the process of making money in Myanmar, multinational corporations
support a dictatorship that has a terrible human rights record, said
Shingler, who termed such corporate activity "unconscionable."

In a press statement, Lois Dauway, staff executive of the Women's Division's
section on Christian social responsibility, said that signing on to the
brief did two things:

"It shows our belief in the biblical mandate to care for the 'least of
these' and to 'do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God' as we
strive for human rights for all people," she said. "It also becomes a voice
for those who are oppressed and dispossessed as we confront hundreds of
multinational corporations who ignore the human rights abuses and make money
by dealing with countries like Myanmar."

Other United Methodist Women attended the rally. Darlene Amon, a member of
the board of directors of the Women's Division, came from Suffolk, Va., to
participate in the rally. She also heard the arguments before the court. In
her eight years on the board, she observed, the group's concern for justice
has taken her "from the most remote village of Africa to the Supreme Court."

After the rally, Shingler said that of all the countries represented at the
women's rights conference in Beijing a few years ago, Burma was the only one
that sent only male representatives.

A group of young adults from the North Indiana Annual (regional) Conference
led the rally in singing "Lean On Me."  Song leader Terry LeMaster from
Columbia City, Ind., shouted out the words for all to follow. The group was
in Washington to participate in a United Methodist Board of Church and
Society seminar program on violence, and the opportunity came up to
participate in the rally.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case this summer.

# # #

This article is based on material written by Erik Alsgaard, assistant
general secretary at the United Methodist Board of Church and Society. 

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United Methodist News Service
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