Mark Ruehlmann, Esq.
Chairman and Global CEO
Squire Patton Boggs
4900 Key Tower
127 Public Square
Cleveland, Ohio  44114

Dear Mr. Ruehlmann:

We write to you as advocates for religious freedom out of a shared concern that foreign governments represented by your firm are among the world’s most aggressive persecutors of people of faith.  It is deeply troubling to us that your prestigious firm and the many good people it employs are currently associated with and providing legal counsel, representation and other services to such nations.

Consider, for example, the following facts about the regimes of the People’s Republic of China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar:

China is engaged in systematic repression of every religious minority, including by controlling access to information via the Internet. Uyghur Muslims experience oppressive surveillance, forced DNA collection and incarceration with over a million of them imprisoned in so-called “political reeducation” centers that are, in actuality, concentration camps. Some such camps have reportedly, chillingly had crematoria installed for disposing of the bodies of those who die while interned.

The Chinese government has also been destroying Protestant and Catholic churches, arresting clerics and their congregants for decades. Recently they have also begun offering rewards for revealing information about where they secretly gather for worship. It is subjecting Falun Gong and other faiths’ believers to involuntary and often murderous organ-harvesting. Tibetan Buddhists suffer cultural genocide, a horror that has prompted some 140 Buddhist monks and nuns to self-immolate.  Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party is aggressively exporting its authoritarian practices and techniques – even in this country where its Confucius Institute influence operations are suppressing religious freedom on campus and its operatives who engage in intimidation and harassment of dissidents and activists.

Saudi Arabia systematically represses its own people – most especially women. The monarchy places a particular emphasis on the suppression of religious freedom at home. As a result, Christians and other faith communities in the Kingdom risk imprisonment and gruesome corporal punishments, including decapitation.

The kingdom also promotes intolerance via its textbooks, mosques and madrassas overseas. A notorious example of such intolerance in practice was the gruesome murder last year in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey of Jamal Khashoggi, an outspoken critic of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

Qatar has been assessed by Open Doors USA to engage in “heavy persecution” of Christians within its borders. And, through its generous financial underwriting and political support for supremacist organizations like ISIS and propaganda outlets like Al Jazeera, it promotes worldwide virulently intolerant practices towards those of other faiths and those who practice no faith at all.  

Surely, Squire Patton Boggs’ attorneys and advisors – including former House Speaker John Boehner and other prominent, retired American lawmakers – and your firm’s other clients, have no desire to be associated with, let alone involved in defending or otherwise being implicated in, these governments’ odious practices.

As advocates for suffering religious communities globally, we are determined to hold accountable those responsible. We respectfully call upon your firm promptly and fully to disassociate itself from and cease all work on behalf of the governments of the People’s Republic of China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

                            Sincerely,