Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a
program that brings you
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news, views, discussion
and up-to-date information
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on religious
liberty developments
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in the United States to
be sure but around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine
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and my guest on the
program is Dr. Robert Seiple.
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Among many accomplishments
you were the first ever
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US ambassador-at-large
for Religious Freedom,
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quite a privilege
and responsibility
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and very significant to
our discussion here today.
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Let me jump in
with just one case
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that I know you dealt with.
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The little country of
Laos, you have visited there
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I know a number of times
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and I had the
privilege with Dr. John Graz
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after some of your
visits we went there.
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It's still a
communist dictatorship
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and religious
liberty is a seriously
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contested issue there, isn't it.
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I would soften
communist dictatorship.
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Go for it. And
the religious freedom.
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We probably had
more success there.
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We had more learning's there.
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I started going to Laos
well, I had secret missions
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over Laos courtesy
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of the United
States Marine Corps.
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In the Vietnam War.
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Yeah, and that
had to be dealt with
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but going back starting in 1989
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with World
Vision, and going back--
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Now you were
president of World Vision.
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World Vision, US. Yeah.
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And then going
back as ambassador
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for the United States and
then going back as the head
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of the institute
for Global Engagement
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which my wife and I started
after the state department.
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So we have a long tenure
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but it takes a long
time, two steps forward,
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one step back, two
steps forward, one step back.
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They need to know
that you're coming back.
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It got so when we made
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may be our 13th or 15th visit
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they would
introduce us that way.
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This is Ambassador Seiple
or and his wife Margaret Ann
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you know them they bring
the whole family over here
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and this is their X
number of times over here.
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That was extremely important.
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It meant that we were not
simply there in the short term
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we have them at--
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there're issues at the
heart of what we wanted to do.
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We listened to them.
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And they had a lot to
overcome that mean America.
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The burden of history.
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The burden of history
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and in the Ho Chi
Minh trail unfortunately
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most of it went
through Laos. Yeah.
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And we bombed the
decants out of there.
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Well, I remember the
statistic that we dropped
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more tonnage of bombs on Laos
than on Germany in World War II.
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Till four years of
World War II. Yeah.
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We have still in
Laos about 400 crash sites
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yet to be exhumed, revisited.
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Four hundred crash sites,
we lost one plane in Kosovo.
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We lost over 400 in Laos.
And we went at war with Laos.
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Well, it impressed
me I always telling you
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before this program but
when we arrived at the airport
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there was the US
Air Force plane there
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and because not much
relationship with the US
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but they were there
to pick up the remains
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of Governor Dean's brother
that just been discovered
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in the jungle
after all those years.
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Yeah. So, yeah.
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We worked very close with them
that's the point of commonality.
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They've been very helpful.
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We work very closely
with, with unexploded ordnance.
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It's our ordnance
that came out of the sky
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and did not explode
when it hit the ground
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and some of the bombies
what they call the bombies
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that have come out
of these cluster bombs.
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Little they are
about the size food cake.
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A big hand grenade, yeah. Yeah.
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And they get armed as they go.
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Some of them go off on impact,
some of them go off 15 minutes,
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15 hours later some
of them didn't go off.
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Last year there are
about 130 causalities.
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Well, war that was over in 1975.
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We had about a 130
causalities of that war
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mostly children
playing out in the woods
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coming across the peace
and medal and being hurt by it.
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So that's a difficult chapter.
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They were in some sense
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I mean, they had a
communist dictatorship
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and then in 1975
when everything else fell
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they picked up this
communist dictatorship.
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They were against the monarchy
and they won the monarchy lost.
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This was the Pathet
Lao guerrillas wasn't it?
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Pathet Lao, yeah.
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Spent a time in the
jungle now they are gonna
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spend their time in
the house of parliament.
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At least they didn't
do with the Cambodians
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did with the whole
attack on their own populists.
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Remember in Cambodia that--
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Oh that's was--
The genocide was--
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That was a terrible thing.
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And the movie,
The Killing Fields
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depict that very well.
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I happened to see
that for the first time
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and sometime in
the mid till 1980s
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in Kampuchea in
Cambodia in Phnom Penh
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and its, its scary
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but a third of the
population were wiped out.
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Now, I happened to think that
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spillover of the
war in the Vietnam
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there was a
crossfire that hurt Laos.
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There was a
crossfire that hurt Cambodia
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and as much as that happened
I think that those places
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we should have sent
a high level delegation
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over there and apologize. Yeah.
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No, you know apologize,
apologize are very tricky.
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You know, there's something
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that I read in the
paper all the time.
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We don't apologize.
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Yeah, apologies are very
tricky in foreign policies
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especially when there
is a communist government
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that comes in. Yeah.
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And that's also
a part of problem.
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It's true, it's not
a simple as a Christian
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we understand then they but
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it can throw a
wrong signal sometime.
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But I think there needs
to be a little recognition
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of what was done in
the past sometimes that.
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Well I have a
chance to apologize
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to the to the Laotians.
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They asked me
they wanted to know
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how many bombs dropped on
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from my plane
dropped on their country.
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They wanted to know.
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And I was very honest in upfront
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and I feel this way
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so it was not an
easy thing to do--
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not a hard thing for me to do.
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Involve no compromise
I thought that we needed
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to apologize to
the Laotian people.
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Now that made a very difficult
in terms of religious freedom
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because Christianity
was a western religion,
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it comes from the same
people that dropped Agent Orange
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on their towns. Yeah.
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And so it was a very
hard place to get folks
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to see this in
their own best interest.
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Took a lot of time
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and we spent a lot of
time with them during that.
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So you put a
positive spin which is good
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because you did progress there
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but you say that there
is reason for hope in Laos.
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But you know when I was there
the things were pretty tight.
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For example, there
were people in jail--
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again I know you helped release
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some of them for merely
giving out Christian literature
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that could get you
a long prison term.
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You know, it's a
communist country
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and we always think
of communist countries
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as centrally held
together but they're not.
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And you go out
into the countryside
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you go on to instead
of Vientiane now down--
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Yes, this was
always out of this.
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I noticed out of Vientiane
then there will be problem.
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Yeah, then you get
people king for a day
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or whatever who were
trying to do there own thing
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and even they
didn't get the word
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or don't care about the word.
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So we have provinces in Laos
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that aren't any better today
than they were ten years ago.
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But overall and in
terms of the direction
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that government wanted to go
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and their appreciation
does for helping them get there
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not just in terms
of religious freedom
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but religious
freedom gives you that cache
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it eliminates the black
eye in the public arena.
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So if you wanted and
they very much wanted
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to have those favorite nation
treatment they needed that.
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I mean China had
it, Vietnam had it
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and they're trying
to sell their goods
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and they got to this
horrendous essential tax on it.
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But that made them a
non-player in the trade.
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So they wanted that and
we knew that they wanted that
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and we said look, this
comes from good behavior.
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And let me define good
behavior its religious freedom.
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It's good for
you, it's good for you.
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And that's the other
thing we learned in Laos.
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You got to find the
point of communality
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vested self interest.
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You're interested in security.
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And they looked at what happened
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to Germany and East Germany.
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They had 700,000
Vietnamese going school
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in East Germany
when East Germany "fell."
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And in you know in
Europe they feel it fell
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because of the
wrong of the church
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whether that's right or
not that's all they felt.
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Yeah. So here comes somebody.
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It was someone's tick that
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the entity was
tittering on the abysm
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and may be the church may be
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John Paul II
helps sort of tip them.
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Well there are
bigger issues that play.
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That's probably
true but in their mind
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the church is
something to be weary off.
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They ascribe more
power to the organized church
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than we would ever
do in this country.
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Well you're getting very
closely and we don't other times
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talk about may
be in other program
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it's an issue that concerns me.
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There is the
danger of any religion
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but I know it from
observing my own culture
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and my own religion
the religious outreach
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can become an
extension of your cultural
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and even your political identity
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and that you're really
are as happened in India
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for example with
the British Empire.
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The missionary
endeavor was really the,
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the advanced
party of colonization.
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It shouldn't have been
but it functioned that way.
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No, we don't have
to look any further
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than our own country. No.
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And the role of
the moral majority
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in trying to
establish a relationship
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between religion and the
state and it failed in my mind
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and we're still seeing
the results of that failure
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and spin offs
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because man in the White House
took president "our Father,
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who art in heaven." Yeah.
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And in the most supreme irony
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why we would focus
on that power structure.
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The pledge is saying it.
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Changes the course of
rivers in the hearts of kings,
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why not focus on that.
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And yet there was a great
irony back around that period.
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Attorney General
Ashcroft who is a great musician
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I remember seeing a video of him
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singing a song that
I think he composed.
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No king but Jesus in American
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well that we need
to keep that in mind
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but we shouldn't mix our faith
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with our political
structure and projection.
00:11:15.51\00:11:20.66
So let me, but tell me
again on this program once
00:11:20.69\00:11:23.70
after I visited there I remember
00:11:23.73\00:11:24.97
explaining it
from my perspective
00:11:25.00\00:11:26.39
but the dynamic in Laos
00:11:26.42\00:11:28.92
is complicated by
not history generally
00:11:28.95\00:11:31.72
but a secessionist
tendency out of Vientiane
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that you alluded to
with the Hmong tribesman.
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Did you find that that's
still part of the dynamic
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that makes religious
expression complicated?
00:11:41.64\00:11:45.24
In certain parts of Laos
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where you have the Hmong
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and normally
there are on borders.
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Well, they are in
Vietnam too, of course.
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Well, sure, they cross borders.
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But this is why
they've become problematic.
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They're sort of the, the
Kurds of Southeast Asia, right.
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Well, borders
are important. Yeah.
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I mean, where does
China have its conflict?
00:12:06.08\00:12:08.87
Honk Kong, Taiwan, Tibet. Right.
00:12:08.90\00:12:11.63
And then the Uyghurs
in Western China. Why?
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It's the, you mess it
with my borders. Yeah.
00:12:14.49\00:12:18.23
And the Hmong tend
to be on the borders.
00:12:18.26\00:12:21.89
There was a time when they
were more Hmong in Thailand
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in the refugee camps.
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More Laos in
Thailand in the refugee camps
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than we are in Laos.
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Laos is a country of
six-and-half million people.
00:12:31.53\00:12:34.42
So it says, it says something
00:12:34.45\00:12:36.16
about the dispersions
given the conflict. Yeah.
00:12:36.19\00:12:39.51
But yeah you get
out into the hinterlands
00:12:39.54\00:12:42.45
and each tells that which
is right in their own eyes
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that becomes--
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Now the way I heard it
many of the Hmong are Christians
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and of course they have
the separatist ambitions
00:12:52.68\00:12:54.57
that really probably had nothing
to do with their religion
00:12:54.60\00:12:56.88
but the fact that
they have separatist views
00:12:56.91\00:13:00.00
they're seen as
the threat by the state
00:13:00.03\00:13:01.56
and then they're
Christians so it sharpens
00:13:01.59\00:13:04.35
the government's interest
in religious activities.
00:13:04.38\00:13:08.84
I see our time is getting
by and we want to take a break
00:13:08.87\00:13:11.44
before we come back
and continue the discussion
00:13:11.47\00:13:13.50
so we will be back
shortly, thank you.
00:13:13.53\00:13:16.48