Editing Sanctuary (section)

== Human sanctuary ==
[[File:Notre-Dame Basilica Interior, Montreal, Canada - Diliff.jpg|thumb|Sanctuary at the [[Notre-Dame Basilica (Montreal)|Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal]]]]

=== Traditions of Sanctuary ===
Although the word "sanctuary" is often traced back only as far as the Greek and Roman empires, the concept itself has likely been part of human cultures for thousands of years. The idea that persecuted persons should be given a place of refuge is ancient, perhaps even primordial, deriving itself from basic features of human [[altruism]]. In studying the concept across many cultures and times, anthropologists have found sanctuary to be a highly universal notion, one which appears in almost all major religious traditions and in a variety of diverse geographies. "Cities of refuge" as described by the Book of Numbers and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, as well as the Bedouin idea of {{transliteration|ar|nazaala}}, or the "taking of refuge", indicate a strong tradition of sanctuary in the Middle East and Northern Africa. In the Americas, many native tribes shared similar practices, particularly in the face of invading European powers. Despite tensions between groups, many tribes still offered and received sanctuary, taking in those who had fled their tribal lands or feared persecution by the Spanish, English, and French.<ref name=Rabben>{{Cite book|last=Rabben|first=Linda|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/47599|title=Sanctuary and Asylum: A Social and Political History|date=2016|publisher=University of Washington Press|isbn=978-0-295-99914-2|language=en}}</ref>

=== Legal sanctuary ===
Some (but not all) temples offered sanctuary to criminals or runaway slaves.<ref>{{cite journal|journal=Melita Historica|title=Non gode l'immunita ecclesiastica|first=Frans|last=Ciappara|volume=9|date=1985|issue=2|pages=117–132|url=http://melitensiawth.com/incoming/Index/Melita%20Historica/MH.09(1984-87)/MH.9(1984)2/orig02.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160416115905/http://melitensiawth.com/incoming/Index/Melita%20Historica/MH.09(1984-87)/MH.9(1984)2/orig02.pdf|archive-date=16 April 2016}}</ref> When referring to prosecution of crimes, sanctuary can mean one of the following:
[[File:Richard Burchett - Sanctuary (1867) contrasted.jpg|thumb|''[[Sanctuary (painting)|Sanctuary]]'' by [[Richard Burchett]]. The Church as a place of refuge during the [[Wars of the Roses]].]]

====Church sanctuary====
{{Main|Right of asylum#Medieval England}}
A sacred place, such as a church, in which fugitives formerly were immune to arrest (recognized by English law from the fourth to the seventeenth century).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wun.ac.uk/wun/events/view/sanctuary-violence-and-law-late-medieval-england|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140826093803/http://www.wun.ac.uk/wun/events/view/sanctuary-violence-and-law-late-medieval-england|archive-date=26 August 2014|title=Sanctuary, Violence, and Law in Late Medieval England - Virtual seminar (abstract)|date=24 May 2010|website=Worldwide Universities Network}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Mortimer |first=Ian |date=2009 |title=[[The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England]]| publisher=Vintage Books |pages=244–245|isbn=978-1-84595-099-6}} [https://archive.org/details/timetravellersgu0000mort_p5o4 Text available on loan via registration]</ref> While the practice of churches offering sanctuary is still observed in the modern era, it no longer has any legal effect and is respected solely for the sake of tradition.<ref>{{cite news|last=Hanna |first=Jason |url=https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/17/us/immigrants-sanctuary-churches-legality-trnd/index.html |title=Can churches provide legal sanctuary to undocumented immigrants?|publisher=CNN|date=2017-02-17 |accessdate=2022-05-09}}</ref>

The term 'sanctuary' is also used to denote the [[Church (building)|part of the church]] which contains the main, or "high altar".

====Political sanctuary====
Immunity to arrest afforded by a sovereign authority. The United Nations has expanded the definition of "political" to include race, nationality, religion, political opinions and membership or participation in any particular social group or social activities. People seeking political sanctuary typically do so by asking a sovereign authority for asylum.

====Right of asylum====
{{Main|Right of asylum}}
[[Image: St John of Beverley Sanctuary Stone.jpg|thumb|Remains of one of four medieval stone boundary markers for the sanctuary of Saint [[John of Beverley]] in the [[East Riding of Yorkshire]]]]
Many ancient peoples recognized a religious right of asylum, protecting those accused of a crime from legal action and from [[exile]] to some extent. This principle was adopted by the early Christian church, and various rules developed for what the person had to do to qualify for protection and just how much protection it was.

Based on an account by [[Gregory of Tours]] in late 6th century France, sanctuary was already practiced, but was not all the time respected.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wickham |first=Chris |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yDiDfipV4AIC |title=The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 |date=2009-01-29 |publisher=Penguin UK |isbn=978-0-14-190853-3 |language=en |chapter=Chapter 5}}</ref> In England, King [[Æthelberht of Kent|Æthelberht]] made the first laws regulating sanctuary in about AD&nbsp;600, though [[Geoffrey of Monmouth]] in his ''[[Historia Regum Britanniae]]'' (c.&nbsp;1136) says that the legendary pre-Saxon king [[Dunvallo Molmutius]] (4th/5th century&nbsp;BC) enacted sanctuary laws in the [[Molmutine Laws]] as recorded by [[Gildas]] (c.&nbsp;500–570).<ref>[[Geoffrey of Monmouth]], ''[[Historia Regum Britanniae]]'' 2, 17</ref> By Norman times, there had come to be two kinds of the sanctuary: churches licensed by the king had a broader version, while other churches had a lower level. The medieval system of asylum was finally abolished entirely in England by [[James I of England|James I]] in 1623.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.britannia.com/history/articles/coroner4.html|title=English Coroner System Part 4: Sanctuary|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica Online]]}}</ref>

====Political asylum====
During the [[Wars of the Roses]] of the 15th century when the Lancastrians or [[House of York|Yorkists]] would suddenly gain the upper hand by winning a battle, some adherents of the losing side might find themselves surrounded by adherents of the winning side and unable to return to their own side, so they would rush to sanctuary at the nearest church until it was safe to leave it. A prime example is Queen [[Elizabeth Woodville]], consort of [[Edward IV of England]].

In 1470, when the Lancastrians briefly restored [[Henry VI of England|Henry VI]] to the throne, Edward's queen was living in London with several young daughters. She moved with them into [[Westminster Abbey]] for sanctuary, living there in royal comfort until Edward was restored to the throne in 1471 and giving birth to their first son [[Edward V of England|Edward]] during that time. When King Edward IV died in 1483, Elizabeth (who was highly unpopular with even the Yorkists and probably did need protection) took her five daughters and youngest son (Richard, Duke of York; Prince Edward had his own household by then) and again moved into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. She had all the comforts of home; she brought so much furniture and so many chests that the workmen had to break holes in some of the walls to move everything in fast enough to suit her.{{citation needed|date=April 2007}}

In the 20th century, during [[World War I]], all of [[Russia]]'s [[Allies of World War I|Allies]] made the controversial decision in 1917 to deny political sanctuary to Tsar [[Nicholas II]] [[Romanov]] and his immediate family when he was overthrown in that year's [[February Revolution]] part of the [[Russian Revolution]] because of his abuses of power and forced to [[abdicate]] in March in favor of [[Alexander Kerensky]]'s [[Russian Provisional Government]]. Nicholas and his family and remaining household were sent to [[Tobolsk]], [[Siberia]] that summer while Kerensky kept Russia in the war when it couldn't win, enabling [[Lenin]] and his [[Bolshevik]]s to gain the Russian people's support in overthrowing Kerensky in that year's [[October Revolution]]. The [[Russian Civil War]] started that November and in July, 1918, with Lenin losing the civil war, [[Shooting of the Romanov family|Nicholas and his family were executed]] on Lenin's orders while confined to the [[Ipatiev House]] in [[Yekaterenburg]].

In 1939, months before [[World War II]] began, 937 [[Jewish]] refugees from [[Nazi Germany]] on board the [[MS St. Louis]] met the same fate, first by [[Cuba]]—their original destination—and afterwards by the [[United States]] and [[Canada]]. As a result, 620 of them were forced back to Europe, where many of them died in [[Nazi concentration camps]] during the war. This incident was the subject of [[Gordon Thomas (author)|Gordon Thomas']] and [[Max Morgan-Witts]]' 1974 novel, ''[[Voyage of the Damned]]'' and its 1976 [[movie]] adaptation.

In 1970, [[Simonas Kudirka]] was denied U.S. sanctuary when he attempted to defect from the then-Soviet Union by jumping from his "mother ship", 'Sovetskaya Litva', onto the [[USCGC Vigilant]] when it was sailing from [[New Bedford]] while Kudirka's ship was anchored at [[Martha's Vineyard]]. Kudrika was accused of stealing 3,000 [[Soviet rouble|roubles]] from Sovetskaya Litva's [[safe]] and when the [[United States Department of State|U.S. State Department]] didn't help him, Kudrika was sent back to the Soviet Union, where he was convicted of [[treason]] and sentenced to ten years of hard labor. Because Kudirka could claim American citizenship through his mother, he was allowed to return to the United States in 1974. His plight was the subject of Algis Ruksenas' 1973 book ''Day of Shame: The Truth About The Murderous Happenings Aboard the Cutter Vigilant During the Russian-American Confrontation off Martha's Vineyard'' and the 1978 [[TV movie]] ''The Defection of Simas Kudirka'', starring [[Alan Arkin]].

Ten years later, [[Ukraine|Ukrainian]] youth, [[Walter Polovchak]], became a [[cause célèbre]] in the 1980s because of his request in 1980 at age 12 to remain in the United States permanently after announcing that he didn't want to return with his parents to what was then [[Soviet Ukraine]], and was the subject of a five-year struggle between U.S. and Soviet courts over his fate, which was decided in his favor in 1985 when Walter turned 18 that October 3 and was no longer a juvenile and thus no longer required to return to the Soviet Union if he didn't want to.

Also in the 1980s, [[Estonia]]n national and alleged [[Nazi war criminal]], [[Karl Linnas]], was the target of several sanctuary denials outside the United States before he was finally returned in 1987 to the then-[[USSR]] to face a highly likely [[death penalty]] for alleged war crimes that he was convicted of in 1962 (see [[Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia]]). Linnas died of a heart attack in a Leningrad prison hospital on July 2, 1987, while waiting for a possible retrial in [[Gorbachev]]'s courts, 25 years after [[Khrushchev]]'s courts convicted him [[Trial in absentia|in absentia]].

==== Sanctuary versus asylum ====
The concepts of sanctuary and asylum are defined very similarly at their most basic level. Both terms involve the granting of safety or protection from some type of danger, often implied to be a persecuting, oppressive power. The divergence between these terms stems primarily from their societal associations and legal standing; while asylum understood in its political sense implies legally-binding protection on the part of a state entity, sanctuary often takes the form of moral and ethical activism that calls into question decisions made by the institutions in power.<ref>{{Cite book|title=United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons|date=1951|publisher=United Nations|oclc=250576716}}</ref>

In many instances, the sanctuary is not incorporated into the law but operated in defiance of it. Efforts to create a sanctuary for the persecuted or oppressed are often undertaken by organizations, religious or otherwise, who work outside of mainstream avenues to ameliorate what they see as deficiencies in the existing policy. Though these attempts to provide sanctuary have no legal standing, they can be effective in catalyzing change at community, local, and even regional levels. Sanctuary can also be integrated into these levels of government through "Sanctuary bills", which designate cities and sometimes states as safe spaces for immigrants deemed illegal by the federal government. These bills work to limit the cooperation of local and regional governments with the national government's efforts to enforce immigration law. In recognition of their progressiveness and boldness in the face of perceived injustice, "Sanctuary bills" are commonly referred to as "activist law".<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Vannini|first1=Sara|last2=Gomez|first2=Ricardo|last3=Carney|first3=Megan|last4=Mitchell|first4=Katharyne|date=2018-12-01|title=Interdisciplinary Approaches to Refugee and Migration Studies|journal=Migration and Society|volume=1|issue=1|pages=164–174|doi=10.3167/arms.2018.010115|issn=2574-1306|doi-access=free}}</ref>

=== Sanctuary in contemporary society ===
{{see also|Sanctuary movement}}

For the last few centuries, it has become less common to invoke sanctuary as a means of protecting persecuted peoples. Yet, the 1980s saw a massive resurgence of cases as part of the U.S.-Central American sanctuary movement. This resurgence was part of a broader anti-war movement that emerged to protest U.S. foreign policy in Central America. The movement grew out of the sanctuary practices of political and religious organizations in both the United States and Central America. It was initially sparked by immigrant rights organizations in well-established Central American communities. These organizations first opposed U.S. foreign policy in Central America and then shifted towards aiding an ever-increasing number of Central Americans refugees. Working in tandem, immigrant rights organizations and churches created many new organizations that provided housing and legal services for newly arrived immigrants. These organizations also advocated for the creation of sanctuary spaces for those fleeing war and oppression in their home countries. By 1987, 440 cities in the United States had been declared "sanctuary cities" open to migrants from civil wars in Central America.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Perla|first1=Hector|last2=Coutin|first2=Susan Bibler|date=2010|title=Legacies and Origins of the 1980s US–Central American Sanctuary Movement|journal=Refuge|volume=26|issue=1|pages=7–19|doi=10.25071/1920-7336.30602|url= https://refuge.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/refuge/article/view/30602|access-date=2020-05-16|doi-access=free}}</ref>

The immigrant-religious organization partnerships of the sanctuary movement remain active, providing essential services to immigrant populations. Particularly notable in recent years is their legal and advocacy work. By providing legal representation to asylum seekers who may not be able to afford it, these organizations give their clients a better chance of winning their respective cases. As of 2008, detained asylum seekers with legal representation were six times more likely to win their cases for asylum, and non-detained asylum seekers with representation were almost three times more likely to win asylum compared with those without it.<ref name=Rabben/> The pro bono legal services provided by these organizations also work to alleviate stress on an adjudication system that is already overloaded with cases—a 2014 study of the system showed that about 250 asylum officers at any one time are tasked with interviewing an average of 28,000 asylum seekers.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Schoenholtz|first=Andrew Ian|title=Lives in the balance : asylum adjudication by the Department of Homeland Security|date=2014 |publisher=New York University Press |isbn=978-0-8147-0877-4|oclc=995330858}}</ref> These sanctuary-based organizations also engage in larger-scale advocacy work that allows them to reach immigrant populations beyond the communities they work in. According to a study done by the "New Sanctuary Movement" organization, at least 600,000 people in the United States have at least one family member in danger of deportation.<ref>{{cite news|title=Immigration Activist Arrested Outside L.A. Church|agency=Associated Press|url=http://cbs2.com/local/local_story_231191810.html|archive-url=http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20070820230047/http://cbs2.com/local/local_story_231191810.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=August 20, 2007|date=Aug 20, 2007|via=Library of Congress Web Archives}}</ref> Legislative and judicial advocacy work at the regional and even national level allows organizations to support this group of people by influencing policy.

From the 1980s continuing into the 2000s, there also have been instances of immigrant rights organizations and churches providing "sanctuary" for short periods to migrants facing deportation in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Australia and Canada, among other nations. In 2007, Iranian refugee Shahla Valadi was granted asylum in Norway after spending seven years in church sanctuary after the initial denial of asylum.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.news24.com/World/News/Iranian-given-asylum-in-Norway-20071213|title=Iranian given asylum in Norway|work=[[News24 (website)|News24.com]]}}</ref> From 1983 to 2003 Canada experienced 36 sanctuary incidents.<ref>{{cite book|author=Randy K. Lippert|author-link=Randy K. Lippert|date=2005|title=Sanctuary, Sovereignty, Sacrifice: Canadian Sanctuary Incidents, Power and Law|publisher=UBC Press |isbn=0-7748-1249-4}}</ref> In 2016, an Icelandic church declared that they would harbor two failed asylum seekers who violated the Dublin Regulation, and police removed them for deportation, as ecclesiastical immunity has no legal standing.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/politics_and_society/2016/06/28/asylum_seekers_dragged_out_of_church_by_reykjavik_p/|title=Asylum seekers dragged out of church by Reykjavík Police}}</ref>