You’re listening to part three of an interview with Dr. Robert Royal, conducted by Dr. William Saunders, Director of the Center for Human Rights. Dr. Royal is an accomplished author and speaker, and has taught at several universities. He’s also the editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, an online publication. To listen to the rest of this interview, click the link in the description or visit humanrights.catholic.edu.
Robert Royal: When people try to tell you, “Well, you know, there are also moderate Muslims who are being attacked;” yeah, that’s true, but again, that’s kind of a secondary point. The real repression that’s going on, the major part of it, 90% or more, is Muslim attacks on Christians.
William Saunders: Yep, and if there were similar things going on in a predominantly Muslim country, where organized Christian groups were doing these things, nobody -I don’t think anybody, literally anybody, would not say it’s religiously motivated. So, let’s be fair where Christians are victims. We need to acknowledge it and try to help them.
I also want to mention, you know, sometimes people may say, “Well, we can’t do anything.” Well, yeah, I mean, there’s limits, of course, but I think the fact that the president of Nigeria is paying attention to this is, to some extent, a consequence of that letter asking Trump to designate them as a CPC, and him doing so, and that’s focusing the world attention on this problem, and it’s embarrassing the government, which should be embarrassed, because it’s not protecting its people.
And there’s some… I just want to mention a couple other things. This is from Congressman Chris Smith, again, who had the hearings about Nigeria, and he’s saying there’s some other things we should do. We should condition foreign assistance on verifiable progress from the Nigerian government in preventing this persecution and in prosecuting the perpetrators and in protecting everybody.
So, you know, they want US aid? Okay, this is something, one of the conditions. Second of all, he has a… We should give humanitarian assistance to faith-based groups working on the ground in Nigeria. And third, we should put sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act and freeze assets of government officials who are involved in this.
So, there’s a lot of things we can do. The one thing I would suggest, and I hope everybody listening will hear me, the one thing we cannot do is be silent about this. This is, again, the scale of it is amazing, more than in the rest of the world, so you need to tell your representatives you support the US doing what it can to help these persecuted Christians in Nigeria.
R: Yeah, as, as you were saying earlier, I think every avenue possible. Government pressures are good. I think that people in Europe should also be paying careful attention to this, and, you know, using whatever carrots and sticks that they have. You know, there are a lot of private groups that are operating.
I happen to be working now as an advisor to Aid to the Church in Need USA. I think we mentioned that earlier. This is a group that has been very active back during the Cold War in Eastern Europe. It’s been very active in the Middle East, trying to rebuild some of these Christian communities.
Some of them were coming back after having had to leave places like Syria and Lebanon and Iraq, et cetera. And they work, also in Africa. I mean, there are a lot of avenues here to… that people can support morally or financially, whatever it is. But I think that any person of good will who wants to make sure that Christians are not being persecuted around the world, this is one of the places to start, because you can look at North Korea.
I mean, North Korea, you could probably say, is a hopeless case. I don’t know what you can do about the very few Christians that still remain in North Korea. And there’s some horrifying stories – I’ve got them in my book – about what happens when people are discovered to be kind of secret Christians in North Korea.
China does a great deal in suppressing Christians. There’s still lots of things going on in the Middle East. But, you know, Nigeria, and right across that belt; Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan – if we don’t do something about it, it’s on us, because we are living in a society where we’re free enough that we can talk about these things, we can use our resources to help, we can petition our government.
That’s all you can expect people to be able to do. I mean, none of us are gonna go invade Nigeria, but we can do whatever we can to encourage all of the levers of power that exist to do the right thing.
W: Yeah, I mean, pray for them, but then do something. What can you do? Like Bob was saying, you can support an organization like Aid to the Church in Need. You can speak to your congressman or even your local state representative. You know, your state can pass a resolution requiring something.
I mean, these things make a difference. You also could circulate Bob’s article from The Catholic Thing, or go to our webpage and read the letter we sent to the president about making Nigeria a country of particular concern. Talk about it in your Sunday school class.
You can do something, and you don’t have to do everything. Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to solve it. Just do something. It’ll make a difference.
R: Yeah, I mean, I think people neglect what can be done through the churches, too, because the churches obviously have connections with religious leaders in the country as well, and those are avenues… I know a lot of people are out there, you know, in the bush, doing what they can, reporting on things, and also trying to protect people.
I mean, we’ve seen whole schools of schoolgirls, you know, being abducted through, you know, hundreds at a time, and being carried off, and sometimes… And this has been going on, I mean, remember, going all the way back to the Obama administration. I think in 2013, there were like 250 schoolgirls who were kidnapped.
Some we don’t know what happened to. Like, about half of them, I think, were eventually returned. We just had a case a couple months ago where maybe another 300 or 350 were kidnapped. So, you know, these are outrages you cannot ignore if you’re a decent human being. and I agree with you entirely.
You don’t have to solve it. You just have to do what comes up. I mean, like many other things in your family and in life, you, when something presents itself to you, you do what you can and you leave it in God’s hands what the ultimate fruit of it is gonna be.
W: Yeah, and we will have all this info so people listening can follow up. We’ll have that in the notes. You can find Bob’s article and read it. You can find our – the letter that Bob and I signed, along with many other groups. You know, you can also circulate this podcast when you get it.
You know, I wouldn’t expect anybody that didn’t know anything about Nigeria to remember everything Bob and I said, so you can circulate this podcast to people and talk about it. But we thank you very much. First, I thank Robert Royal for being with us. I thank him for all the work he’s done to help draw attention to the plight of persecuted Christians.
And I thank everybody for joining us, and like I said, visit our webpage, humanrights.catholic.edu. We’ll see you next time for another episode of The Barefoot Lawyer Reports.
The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights has published a documentary on the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The documentary features world-class human rights experts, from former State Department officials, to ambassadors and human rights activists. It can be found on our website at humanrights.catholic.edu.