Dear Sandy,Waiting wrote:
I do remember writing letters to the Malawi government politely requesting that they stop beating, raping & killing Jehovah's Witnesses because the witnesses wouldn't buy a $.25 political card. It was deemed necessary to remain "completely neutral" with their lives.
I remember this. I was a young person when the reports of these atrocities came out. The Malawi JWs underwent severe persecution to preserve their neutrality. In Ray Franz' Crisis of Conscience he tells how the Malawi card was just a national ID card, somewhat similar in nature to the Social Security Card that is in the United States. Also, at the same time that the JWs in Malawi were being persecuted for their neutrality, the brothers in Mexico were paying a bribe to government officials to obtain false documents that showed they had reported for their mandatory military training and had completed it. This was also well documented in Crisis of Conscience. So yes, it definitely looks like there was a double standard, and after examining the evidence, I believe I was lied to.Tammy