The Foreign Service Journal, October 2021

22 OCTOBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Combating Antisemitism at State I n a July 28 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, more than 70 State Department and USAID employees called for the removal of Fritz Berggren, an FSO they accuse of “spewing hate speech directed against Jews” on his website. The letter was organized by members of the new Jewish Americans and Friends in Foreign Affairs employee affinity group, Foreign Policy reported on Aug. 31. Blinken, in an Aug. 9 letter in response, wrote: “I want to assure you that the Department treats reports of alleged misconduct with the utmost seriousness.” He said that he could not comment on specific cases “for privacy reasons,” but emphasized that employees who engage in discriminatory behavior can face disciplinary action “up to and including separation when warranted.” In an Aug. 31 post, Berggren welcomed readers of the Foreign Policy article, includ- ing Jewish people, to his website, and expressed enthusiasm for the opportunity to try to convert his visitors to Christianity. State has sought to address issues of antisemitism in the department in recent months. In July, a swastika was found carved into an elevator in the Harry S Tru- man Building. On July 30, President Joe Biden named a new special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, Emory University Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, and elevated the position to the rank of ambassador. The position requires Senate confirmation, which was pending as of early September. On Aug. 4, the department held a virtual town hall, “Together We Stand Against Anti-Semitism.” n This edition of Talking Points was compiled by Cameron Woodworth, Susan Maitra and Shawn Dorman. Six Countries Cited in Atrocities Report T he State Department called out six countries—China, Ethiopia, Myan- mar, Iraq, Syria and South Sudan—in its 2021 Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities report, sent to Congress on July 12. The report cites China’s “crimes against humanity” against the pre- dominantly Muslim Uyghur population, including imprisonment, torture and forced sterilization. It also highlights acts of ethnic cleansing in Western Tigray, Ethiopia, as well as brutal killings and arbitrary detentions in Myanmar. Congress passed the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act in 2018. In addition to the annual report, the law directs the State Department to provide additional training to FSOs assigned to countries experiencing or at risk of mass atrocities. “We’ll use all of the tools at our disposal—including diplomacy, foreign assistance, investigations and fact-finding missions, financial tools and engage- ments, reports like this one, which raise awareness and allow us to generate coordinated international pressure in response—in a whole-of-government approach to preventing and mitigating atrocities around the globe,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on presenting the report. 50 Years Ago Diplomacy in a Yemeni Jail T he last thing I expected to happen, when considering whether to embark on that combination of excitement and frustration known as a diplomatic career, was that one of the most interesting portions of it would be spent inside a jail in Yemen. Neither had I realized, when studying international law in prepa- ration for taking the Foreign Service examination, that the recognized right of the foreign consul to visit an imprisoned countryman would be extended in this instance to a duty to share his confinement. But there I was on April 26, 1967, sharing a cell with Steven Liapis and Harold Hartman. They were employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development mission, headquartered in Taiz, Yemen. … Liapis and Hartman were under investigation by the Government of the Yemen Arab Republic on a charge of launching a bazooka attack against an Egyptian ammunition dump with the object of blowing up the town of Taiz and ultimately of subverting the Yemeni Government. The penalty for this offense, if guilt were proved, would be death. This would leave Liapis and Hartman the choice, under time-honored Yemeni tradition, of choosing a firing squad or— as a more manly course—of decapitation with an Islamic sword. … The charge was preposterous, of course, but in the era of national sov- ereignty dominion there was little that the United States could do except patiently, and with forbearance, attempt, on a variety of fronts, to secure Liapis’ and Hartman’s release. —FSO Roscoe S. Suddarth, from his first-person account of a dramatic and unusual incident in the October 1971 FSJ.