Caroline Cox

Caroline Cox (Baroness Cox) is member of the British House of Lords and a right-wing campaigner. Since 2005 she has been a co-president of the Jerusalem Summit, a hardline pro-Israel advocacy outfit. Their conference was sponsored by the Michael Cherney Foundation, which also funds the Intelligence Summit in the US, both of which are gatherings of neoconservatives such as Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes, Harold Rhode, Walid Phares, R. James Woolsey and others. In 2009 she was one of two UK peers to invite Dutch anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders to the UK.

Human Rights role

Kirsten Sellars in her book, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, (pp. 173–174) has this to say about Caroline Cox:

In fact, the scope and nature of slavery in Sudan is hotly disputed. Not only that, but the modus operandi of the Christian human rights groups engaged in 'slave redemption' – buying slaves to set them free – is the source of great controversy. Their legions of critics, ranging from Unicef and Human Rights Watch to Anti-Slavery International and Save The Children, accuse them of adopting methods which perpetuate rather than eliminate the practice.

This criticism is based on how Cox ran the British section of Christian Solidarity International, and then helped to form the Surrey-based breakaway, Christian Solidarity Worldwide. And adds:

In the late nineties, Cox made numerous forays to Sudan to 'redeem' slaves. Her supporters see her as a latter-day saviour, but her detractors argue that buying slaves encourages an abominable practice. Sir Robert Ffolkes, Sudan programme director of the Save The Children Fund, says that it 'condone[s] the practice of purchasing human beings', while Mike Dotteridge of Anti-Slavery International says that it allows it 'potentially to flourish'. Patrick McCormick, spokesman for Unicef, makes the same point: 'We find it hard to believe that it hasn't encouraged . . . slave traders to increase their business.' As Christopher Beese of Merlin, the British medical charity, says of Cox: 'She's not the most popular person in Sudan among the humanitarian aid people . . . some of them feel she is not well-enough informed.' These are valid criticisms – albeit criticisms that raise important (and largely unanswered) questions about the distorting effects of all humanitarian efforts in Sudan.

Sellars also observes that Anti-Slavery International used a 1999 report to the UN's Working Party on Slavery to challenge some of the claims being advanced about the scale of the problem. It said:

A representative of Christian Solidarity International spoke at the beginning of this year of 'tens of thousands' of people in slavery in Sudan, and of 'concentration camps' for slaves. At Anti-Slavery International, we know of no evidence to justify an assertion that 20,000 people or more are currently held as captives and slaves in these areas of Sudan. We know that abductions have continued to be reported . . . but realise that a number as large as 20,000 would be more visible than the smaller group which we understand is actually held, of hundreds or several thousand individuals scattered around separate households.

One possible explanation of events comes from a (2002) press release from The European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council, which drew on reports from 'The Irish Times', 'Independent on Sunday', 'The Washington Post' and the 'International Herald Tribune', which it states, chose to publish, or republish, articles exposing the deep fraud and corruption at the heart of claims of "slave redemption" in Sudan.The jist of this is that people (mostly children) pose as slaves to obtain the money offered to buy them from western organisations and that this has been orchestrated to fund the SPLA who use it to fund their fight against the Moslem government.

One key figure in this type of version of events is repentant Iran/Contra sinner Elliott Abrams — "He’s the guy who lied and wheedled to aid and protect human rights abusers,” The Nation’s David Corn wrote upon Abrams’ 2001 return to government, in reference to Abrams defence of the U.S.-backed military regime in El Salvador even after evidence emerged of regime-sponsored massacres. The point here is that Abrams used his time out of government to develop the new specialty that paved his path back: religion and the Middle East, but also work on Sudan.

In 1996 he became president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington outfit dedicated to applying faith-based morality to public policy. To boost support for Israel, Abrams urged a new kinship between observant Jews and evangelical Christians. He promoted a strongly pro-Israel stance toward peace negotiations with the Palestinians, criticizing the 1993 Oslo accords as too demanding of Israel.

Abrams was also chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. According to Rightweb The Ethics and Public Policy Center is one of several institutes and programs established by neoconservatives to promote an increased role of religion in public policy. This argues that Abrams used an instrumentalist position on human rights, saying that human rights should be a “policy tool” of the U.S. government. The Center was previously run by Ernest Lefever, one of the founding members of the 1970s version of the anti-communist Committee on the Present Danger.

Francis Mading Deng and J. Stephen Morrison's (2001) Report of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Task Force on U.S.-Sudan Policylists Elliott Abrams (then Chair of U.S. Committee on International Religious Freedom, and Ethics and Public Policy Center) and L. Paul Bremer (then with Kissinger Associates, Inc.) as two of its presenters. Cox, and Deng (and Dan Eiffe of Norwegian People's Aid who smuggled arms to the SPLA under the guise of religious aid both made contributions at a February 14, 2000: Hearing on Religious Persecution in Sudan of which Abrams was Commissioner.

Abrams' (2001) The Influence of Faith: Religious Groups and U.S. Foreign Policy, draws its inspiration from Samuel Huntington and was funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation drawing on the center’s work, it set out a long-standing use of religion in this manner:

“...some missionaries became what we would now call lobbyists and their “interest group” often allied with less devout expansionists.”

The book also mentions “premillenial dispensationalism,” whereby the British promise of a “Jewish homeland in Palestine as evidence of Jesus’ imminent return” was used as propaganda or “attuned” as Abrams puts it. Premillenial dispensationalism” is still put about by Michael Ledeen and his wife. Abrams also speaks of Father Edmund Walsh, an American Jesuit priest, and founder of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, in 1919, the man who reputedly encouraged Senator McCarthy to use anti-Communism as a stepping stone. And it also mentions that Reagan’s presidential aides worked Pope John Paul “to crack open the Eastern Bloc”.

Affiliations

• Former President, Christian Solidarity Worldwide
• Co-President/founder, The Jerusalem Summit
• Cofounder, Campaign for a Free Britain (now defunct)
• Chairman of the Executive Board of the International Islamic Christian Organisation for Reconciliation and Reconstruction (IICORR)
• Member, International Committee for Democracy in Cuba
• Member, Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China
• Board of Reference, Servant's Heart
• Supporter, Freedom Association
• Advisory Council (2007), Centre for Social Cohesion
• Advisory Council, Migration Watch UK
• Advisory Board, Iman Foundation

Resources and articles

Resources

• Neocon Europe Caroline Cox
• Cult Information Centre - former patron