Sanctuary Convictions

The conviction of eight Christian activists for smuggling or harboring allegedly illegal immigrants is an act of savagery. No sensible person would believe, as the prosecution charged, that those church people would risk going to prison for smuggling aliens into the United States simply so they could earn more money than they could in Central America. The whole world knows that political refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador face certain torture and death if they are turned over to the U.S.-trained death squads of those two countries.

To understand what motivates the Reagan Administration you have only to imagine that the church workers in Tucson had given sanctuary to Russians defecting from the Soviet Union. Would they have been sentenced to prison? Of course not. They would have been invited to the White House for a freedom award.

The Guatemalans, the Salvadorans and their Christian friends are victims of Ronald Reagan’s accelerating preparations for war against the Soviet Union.

DAVID KINKEAD

Forestville