Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
I submitted a question for George Rupp, president and CEO of the IRC, for his interview today by the PRM’s Assistant Secretary Eric Schwartz.
“Why does the IRC partner with local churches in their attempts to convert Bhutanese refugees to Christianity, for example, IRC’s partnership with The Word at Southern Hills church in Abilene, Texas?”
Unfortunately this comment seems to have magically disappeared from the list of submitted questions (funny how that works). Yet, I base the question on a news article from Abilene that I linked to in January. Personally I think that these refugees’ Hindu and Buddhist beliefs are serving them just fine and I don’t understand why our government and its contractors, therefore we as a society, are partnering to give these new Americans a new religion, which they haven’t requested.
So then I submitted another question, which this time they actually posted:
“A 2007 State Department PRM monitoring report for the IRC office in Baltimore indicates that the IRC and another resettlement contractor frequently placed refugees into an East Baltimore apartment complex that had evidence of questionable maintenance and security standards (housing that is safe, sanitary, and in good repair is supposedly a State Department refugee contract requirement). Monitors also noted that the IRC had failed to give a three-member Meskhetian Turk refugee family a crib and other supplies for their infant son. I note, again, that these items are listed as “minimum” required items in the State Department contracts. Why does the IRC fail to meet so-called “minimum requirements” of their obligations to refugees in the public/private partnership?”
The State Department did not select this question for use in the interview — of course — yet this question was also based on a document – one of the State Department’s own monitoring reports – so it’s not like I just make this stuff up. Again the State Department doesn’t want to discuss the issue.
I think there’s an obvious problem here when our government feels free to filter out substantive questions that it may not feel comfortable with, or which may not convey the message it wishes to control, but isn’t the supposed intent of our constitutional democracy to allow public input? I think we need to be concerned when a part of our US Department of State feels free to disregard that fundamental principle.
