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GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) -- Dwight Freeney considered retirement. A month into the season he still wasn't on a team. Then the Arizona Cardinals came calling, looking to boost their troubled pass rush....
ZWICKAU, Germany (AP) -- Christmas carols sound in the medieval square, and the scents of hot spiced wine, anise cookies and beeswax candles waft through the air at Zwickau's traditional Christmas market....
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- Payam Feili fled his native Iran last year because of the persecution he faced over his sexuality. Now, the gay poet has made a years-long dream come true - he is visiting Israel, Iran's archenemy and a country known for its tolerance toward gays....
NEW YORK (AP) -- Hillary Clinton says her husband wouldn't be much use picking out flower arrangements for the White House, but if she's elected president, he would come in handy as a host and adviser....
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Samsung's hopes of ending years of acrimony over whether its computer chip factories caused cancer have hit a hitch: some sickened workers and their families say they'll never accept its highly conditional offer of financial assistance....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican voters don't think Donald Trump is likable. They don't think he's compassionate. And many don't consider him particularly honest....
LE BOURGET, France (AP) -- High-stakes climate talks outside Paris will not end Friday as planned but will continue at least one more day as diplomats try to overcome disagreements over how - or even whether - to share the costs of fighting climate change and shift to clean energy on a global scale....
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- The teenager's mother clapped her hands and screamed with joy as she watched an Oklahoma City jury convict a former police officer of raping her daughter and sexually assaulting seven other women....
 WASHINGTON- The United States has a moral obligation to protect unaccompanied children and families from persecution in Central America, said Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, October 21. Bishop Seitz is an advisor to the USCCB Committee on Migration and a member of the board of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC).The humanitarian outflow, driven by organized crime in the northern triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, continues, with nearly 40,000 unaccompanied children and an equal number of mothers with children having arrived in the United States in Fiscal Year 2015."If we do not respond justly and humanely to this challenge in our own backyard, then we will relinquish our moral leadership and moral influence globally," Bishop Seitz said.Bishop Seitz pointed to the human consequences of U.S. policies which are designed to deter migration from the region, i...
 WASHINGTON- The United States has a moral obligation to protect unaccompanied children and families from persecution in Central America, said Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, October 21. Bishop Seitz is an advisor to the USCCB Committee on Migration and a member of the board of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC).
The humanitarian outflow, driven by organized crime in the northern triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, continues, with nearly 40,000 unaccompanied children and an equal number of mothers with children having arrived in the United States in Fiscal Year 2015.
"If we do not respond justly and humanely to this challenge in our own backyard, then we will relinquish our moral leadership and moral influence globally," Bishop Seitz said.
Bishop Seitz pointed to the human consequences of U.S. policies which are designed to deter migration from the region, including U.S. support for Mexican interdiction efforts which are intercepting children and families in Mexico and sending them back to danger, in violation of international law.
Bishop Seitz recommended an end to these interdictions and the introduction of a regional system which would screen children and families for asylum in Mexico and other parts of the region. He also called for Congress to approve and increase a $1 billion aid package proposed by the Administration.
"If we export enforcement," Bishop Seitz said, "we also must export protection."
Bishop Seitz recalled the words of Pope Francis before Congress in September, when he invoked the golden rule in guiding our nation's actions toward those seeking safety in our land.
Quoting the Holy Father, Bishop Seitz repeated to the committee, "'The yardstick we use for others will be the yardstick which time will use for us.'"
"Mr. Chairman, I pray that time, and history, will conclude that we honored this rule in meeting this humanitarian challenge," Bishop Seitz concluded.
Bishop Seitz' testimony can be found at http://www.usccb.org//about/migration-policy/congressional-testimony/upload/seitz-ongoing-migration.pdf
Keywords: Bishop Mark J. Seitz, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, USCCB, Congress, Senate, Committee on Migration, migration, unaccompanied children, violence, Pope Francis
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Washington D.C., Dec 10, 2015 / 07:46 pm (CNA).- As the world observes Human Rights Day, advocates have turned their focus to China for its egregious abuses, particularly the detainment of activists and forced family planning policies. “China is in a race to the bottom with North Korea for the title of world’s worst violators of human rights,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), chair of the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, at a Dec. 9 press conference. Rep. Smith and others at the event called for the release of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese human rights advocate who has been imprisoned since 2008. “Every day Liu Xiaobo remains incarcerated; every day his wife Liu Xia remains arbitrarily detained; every time China denigrates another Nobel Laureate, the Dalai Lama; and every time another rights advocate or religious leader is jailed or disappeared is another blow to China’s international prestige and ...
Washington D.C., Dec 10, 2015 / 07:46 pm (CNA).- As the world observes Human Rights Day, advocates have turned their focus to China for its egregious abuses, particularly the detainment of activists and forced family planning policies. “China is in a race to the bottom with North Korea for the title of world’s worst violators of human rights,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), chair of the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, at a Dec. 9 press conference. Rep. Smith and others at the event called for the release of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese human rights advocate who has been imprisoned since 2008. “Every day Liu Xiaobo remains incarcerated; every day his wife Liu Xia remains arbitrarily detained; every time China denigrates another Nobel Laureate, the Dalai Lama; and every time another rights advocate or religious leader is jailed or disappeared is another blow to China’s international prestige and another obstacle to better U.S.-China relations,” Smith continued. The U.S. must be a leader on human rights to enable progress in China, he added. “We must show leadership and resolve because only the U.S. has the power and prestige to stand up to China’s intransigence.” Liu Xiaobo is a Chinese professor, writer, and human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for his efforts to promote human rights in China. He was awarded the prize while serving an 11-year prison sentence for “inciting subversion.” Several members of Congress calling for his release were joined by Chinese human rights advocates Chen Guangcheng, Fang Zheng, and Dr. Yang Jianli. “The U.S. must not shy away from meeting with the Dalai Lama or other dissidents,” Smith said. “We must use visa bans on Chinese officials who violate human rights. We need to connect Internet and press freedoms as both economic and human rights priorities. And we must demand, repeatedly and clearly, that the unconditional release of political prisoners is in the interest of better U.S.-China relations.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), co-chair of the CECC, noted the irony that China was an original drafter of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Enshrined in the document are a variety of rights and protections to include freedom from arbitrary arrest, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and conscience and freedom of movement,” he said. “Sadly these God-given rights remain elusive for millions of Chinese citizens including Liu.” Speakers at the press conference noted the Chinese government’s recent reported abuses like the 2015 crackdown on hundreds of human rights lawyers and their staff and families. Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, commemorates the United Nations’ adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948. It was a milestone document and the first global human rights charter. Rights listed include a right to “life, liberty, and security of person,” protection against all torture and “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment,” and a right to asylum from persecution in another country. Last week, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China held a hearing on the country’s proposed two-child policy, which would simply be an extension of the decades-old one-child policy that human rights advocates say is genocide and results in widespread human rights abuses. And the new two-child policy may not be certain. Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer, testified before the CECC on Dec. 3 that just days after the policy announcement, the Chinese family planning bureau called the policy only a “proposal.” One of the witnesses, Chinese mother Sarah Huang, became pregnant with her second child before the new policy announcement and explained how she traveled to the U.S. to have her child because of her fear of a forced abortion. The Chinese authorities, along with paid informants, brutally enforce the law by forcing mothers who do not obtain permission to become pregnant to abort their children and be sterilized. “My husband and I wanted a second child for many years,” Huang stated in her written testimony to the CECC, and they were “very happy” when she was pregnant with their second child and when the two-child policy was announced. However, her husband’s employer, the Chinese government, informed him that they would have to abort the child because the couple did not meet the requirements of the new policy. They threatened him with a deadline. The couple flew to the U.S. to have the child, and Huang said they could face a fine back in China equaling $36,000. Human rights abuses will still be rampant under the two-child policy, she insisted. Women will be subject to forced contraception and sterilization, the notorious family planning bureau will still exist under another name, families will still abort unborn girls in order to have a son to carry on the family name, and “black clinics” will enable gendercide by carrying illegal ultrasound machines so parents can discover the sex of the child, she said. “I believe this is one of the most tragic events of modern world history,” she said in her testimony. “As we are the ones who are aware of what is happening in China, we have an inherent responsibility to act.” The new policy is “not going to resolve the problems in the countryside of China,” testified Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers. The sterilizations that are forced upon Chinese women will continue, and they “ruin a women’s health,” she said in her testimony before the CECC. Women are permanently disabled after sterilizations so that they can’t even perform hard tasks on the family farms. China’s record on religious freedom is also among the worst in the world. The U.S. State Department has designated it as a “Country of Particular Concern” each year since 1999 for its severe and ongoing abuses of religious freedom. The government has detained and fined members of different faiths and has even destroyed churches and houses of worship. Over 400 Christian churches were torn down, desecrated, or destroyed in 2014, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. There are five state-sanctioned religions, “patriotic religious associations,” but faith leaders of both registered and non-registered churches have been met with harassment and arrest by the government. Members of Falun Gong, a religious practice, are seen by the government as part of an “evil cult” and have been subject to torture, organ-harvesting, psychiatric experimentation by the government.
