Wolf Book Highlights Focus on Human Rights

In news stories about Capitol Hill, scandal often appears to trump congressional work that doesn’t divide people along partisan lines the same way as say sex, conflicts of interest or, lately, birth control and abortion.

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) has faced many tough challenges, particularly around election time, during a political career that has returned him to the House every other year for the past 32 years. But few would argue that Wolf has not stood up for people around the world facing oppression. From Sudan to Beijing to Kabul, Wolf has been there to see the reality and show the world.

What few people, it seems, know is that Wolf co-authored a book last year with Anne Morse, sharing some of his experiences.

In Prisoner of Conscience: One Man’s Crusade for Global Human and Religious Rights (Zondervan Publishers, Oct. 11, 2011), Wolf details a career in which he has raised the alarm about violations of human rights by despots and dictators around the globe. Wolf describes the tragedy of barbaric regimes that persecute, punish, enslave and sometimes even kill their own populations to advance political goals. Wolf has taken on the unpopular causes of refugees and political prisoners, agitating foreign governments.

Wolf describes the barbarity of the Ceausescu regime he witnessed in Romania where he traveled in 1985. He visited Ethiopia during famines in the ‘80s, and in 2003 decrying the media’s indifference the second time.

“The starving people of Africa were living the ultimate ‘reality show’ in the most stark and grim terms,” Wolf wrote, adding that it appeared no one cared.

In China, Wolf visited the notorious Prison Number One in Beijing and saw men and women locked up for protesting the massacre at Tiananmen Square. In 1997, Wolf dressed as a tourist to sneak into Tibet, later emerging with evidence the Chinese government was committing cultural genocide there.

Among the many incidents of oppression and abuse in Prisoner of Conscience, Wolf explains:

• How large portions of America’s public debt are held by despots in China and Saudi Arabia, and what the worsening debt crisis could mean for America’s national security
• How China’s government kills political and other prisoners to sell their organs for transplant.
• How Chinese forced labor was being used to make products for export to the West
• Why the United Nations has refused to act on the tragedy in Darfur
• How Chinese cyber-espionage efforts against the U.S. government and industry erode our safety
• How the dungeonmasters in the Soviet gulag routinely mistreated those in their care
• How China Supports the Sudan government in its genocide in Darfur and Southern Sudan

Get Prisoner of Conscience from publisher Zondervan.

Get the Prisoner of Conscience on Amazon.

Wolf discusses Prisoner of Conscience on C-SPAN Video.