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Editorials
Tuesday, June 20, 2000Aliens’ deaths show
need for vigilanceTHE horrifying discovery of the bodies of 58 illegal immigrants in a truck entering Britain on a ferry from a Belgian port is the latest and worst atrocity in the grisly story of trafficking in humans across national borders.The issue: Fifty-eight illegal immigrants were found dead in a truck entering Britain on a ferry.
The victims apparently suffocated. The truck's refrigeration unit was turned off. The truck left Belgium on the hottest day of the year in England and Northern Europe with temperatures reaching 86 degrees.
Two people were found alive in the truck. Police refused to identify the hospital where they were taken, apparently out of concern that they might be killed or abducted to keep them from providing information.
The problem is not confined to Britain. Elsewhere in Europe, at least 173 people drowned last year attempting to cross the Adriatic from Albania to Italy. And it's probably a bigger problem in the United States -- including Hawaii -- Canada, Mexico and Central America.
The victims in Britain appeared to be from the Far East, possibly China. This would be consistent with previous incidents in the U.S. and its neighbors that have mainly involved Chinese -- aside from the frequent smuggling of Latinos across the Mexican border.
Last January three Chinese were found dead in a container unloaded in Seattle. The same month 25 Chinese were found in two containers on a ship arriving in Vancouver, B.C. A total of 85 container stowaways were arrested by U.S. and Canadian authorities in one month.
Last August the Coast Guard responded to a distress call from a vessel 350 miles from Midway Island and found 120 Chinese on board. The ship was towed to Midway, where the passengers were treated before being returned to China. In addition, hundreds of illegal immigrants from China were detained last year in vessels off Guam.
A previous surge of human smuggling across the Pacific occurred in the early 1990s. One vessel carrying 96 passengers succeeded in entering Honolulu Harbor in 1992 but immigration officers were able to detail all of them before they could escape into the city.
In 1993 another ship, carrying 527 illegal immigrants under miserable conditions, was found adrift 1,500 miles southwest of Oahu and towed to port by the Coast Guard. On the U.S. East Coast, a smuggling ship ran aground off New York City.
The Chinese victims often pay smugglers as much as $25,000 to $30,000, to be repaid after they reach the United States, mainly by working in garment sweatshops and restaurants in Chinatowns in New York and other cities. Some are virtually enslaved as prostitutes, gang enforcers, drug runners and pickpockets.
Commenting on the discovery of the 58 bodies, Prime Minister Tony Blair said the incident is the subject of a major criminal investigation. "It underlines the importance of stamping out this trade in people," Blair said.
Intense vigilance to catch the smugglers and long prison sentences to punish them are needed to deal with the problem -- not only in Britain, but also in the United States and other countries affected by this cruel racket.
Religion in schools
OFFICIALLY sanctioned religion has no place in public schools, but neither does prohibition of private exercise of religious freedom. Those two principles have been reiterated by the U.S. Supreme Court, but its ruling is not likely to end the controversy about the First Amendment's ban on government establishment of religion.
Five years ago, the valedictorian at Kailua High School was barred from thanking God in her commencement speech, until the state Department of Education relented to her constitutional right of free speech. In 1998, President Clinton issued guidelines clarifying permissible religious activities in public schools, including the right to pray privately and individually, to say grace at lunch, to form religious clubs that use school facilities and to read the Bible or any other religious material during class time or in study halls.
By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court now has barred Texas school officials from letting students lead crowds in prayer before football games. The ruling leaves the federal guidelines intact but strongly reiterates the court's 1962 decision that officially sponsored prayers or religious statements in public schools violate the First Amendment.
Supporters of the stadium prayers emphasized that they were student-led. However, they were clearly sanctioned by the Texas school district, which allowed students to elect a "chaplain" to deliver the prayers at home football games and graduation ceremonies. The procedure created a method for students to establish a predominant religion, to the detriment of students with other beliefs.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that constitutionally protected religious liberty "is abridged when the state affirmatively sponsors the particular religious practice of prayer." That essentially is what the Texas school district was doing when it allowed a process for students to elect their predictably Baptist representative in the area of religion. The lawsuit was filed by two families -- one Catholic and one Mormon.
School officials should abandon efforts to sanction collective student prayer. But they also should not attempt to prevent students from praying. Those policies are not contradictory. Rather, they are essential to the government's role of religious neutrality as required by the Constitution.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
