...that Europe’s largest internal armed conflict is in Russia’s North Caucasus, particularly Dagestan and Chechnya?  

The conflict in Russia’s North Caucasus region is the largest internal armed conflict in Europe, pitting Russian government forces against armed insurgents -- many of whom seek a regional Shari’ah-based political unit.  The fighting has had a devastating impact on not only the lives of civilians but also religious freedom throughout the region.

Since the late 1990’s, observers report that the Salafist form of Islam has been spreading in the North Caucasus, particularly in Dagestan.  Its growth is influenced by the negative official treatment of conservative Muslims, local traditions of religion and ethnicity, ties to the Chechen conflict, and the roles of local religious leaders. Most local Salafis are peaceful, but face a difficult integration into local societies and economies. In Dagestan, the North Caucasus’ most violent region, Salafi communities are banned, but the local government has initiated an effort to build social consensus on Islam.  That initiative, however, may have been hindered by the August 2012 murder of Said Afandi Atsayev, a key local Sufi leader.  Three individuals were arrested in December 2012 for their alleged assistance to the female suicide attacker.

Chechnya’s Kremlin-appointed president, Ramzan Kadyrov, oversees mass human rights violations, including of religious freedom.  He distorts Chechen Sufi traditions to justify his rule, instituted a repressive state based on his personal religious diktat, and has ordered the wearing of the Islamic headscarfin public buildings.  Kadyrov has praised the murders of at least nine women for “immodest behavior” since 2008; the killers have not stood trial.  Kadyrov and his men stand accused of murders, tortures, and disappearances of opponents and human rights activists in Russia and abroad.  By early 2013, the ECtHR issued over 210 rulings against Russia for human rights violations in its counter-insurgency campaign in Chechnya.  Since the start of the conflict, some 160,000 Chechens have been given refugee status in Europe.  

Another North Caucasus republic, Kabardino-Balkaria, was the site of a popular conflict in 2005, partly due to the closure of all mosques in its capital, Nalchik.  USCIRF recently has received reports of maltreatment of prisoners sentenced for their alleged role in those events.  Rustam Matsev, a lawyer who has defended the Nalchik prisoners, allegedly received death threats in June 2012.

...that the Bangladeshi government is facing widespread pressure to adopt a blasphemy law that carries the death penalty?

Since February 2013, the Bangladeshi government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has faced widespread pressure to adopt a blasphemy law that includes capital punishment for insulting Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.  The country recently has been experiencing widespread protests and violence associated with this call.

This pressure began in April, after four internet bloggers were arrested for “harming religious sentiments” in their postings on Bangladesh’s International War Crimes Tribunal.  (Bangladesh, not the international community, established the tribunal to adjudicate alleged war crimes perpetrated in 1971 during Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan.)  They also blogged about the conviction and death sentence for a leading Jamaat-e-Islami leader, Delwar Hossain Sayeedi.  Jamaat-e-Islami is the largest religious political party in Bangladesh that opposed partition from Pakistan.

Jamaat-e-Islami and its allies, including Hifazat-e-Islam, circulated calls across Bangladesh for a blasphemy law and held multiple rallies.  Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in an interview with BBC rejected that Bangladesh needed a blasphemy law. However, in the last month fervent support for such a law has increased.

On May 4^th, more than a hundred thousand people attended a rally organized in Dhaka by Hifazat-e-Islam and demonstrated their support for the adoption of a blasphemy law which would include the death penalty.  The rally sparked a violent confrontation between rally supporters and governmental security forces, resulting in the death of at least twenty people, injuries to dozens more and damage to buildings, cars and other property. 

While the situation in Bangladesh remains uncertain, blasphemy laws inherently are problematic as they run counter to international human rights standards.  As examples from around the world show, they empower governments, religious majority communities, and extremists to enforce particular religious views on individuals, minorities, and dissenters.

For more information on blasphemy cases in the world see the Thematic Issues chapter of USCIRF’s 2013 Annual Report .

...that USCIRF’s 2013 Annual Report recommends that 15 countries be designated as the worst violators of religious freedom?

USCIRF issued its 2013 Annual Report on April 30. The report highlights the state of religious freedom abroad during 2012 and identifies governments that are the most egregious violators of this fundamental freedom.  USCIRF’s 2013 Annual Report includes more countries than ever before -- 29 specifically are addressed and at least 22 additional countries are discussed in thematic sections. 

The International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) mandates that USCIRF issue the Annual Report to the President, Secretary of State, and Congress by May 1 of each year, In the report, which also is issued publicly, USCIRF recommends that the Secretary of State re-designate the following eight nations as “countries of particular concern,” or CPCs, for their governments’ perpetration or toleration of systematic, ongoing, egregious religious freedom violations:  Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan. USCIRF also finds that seven other countries meet the CPC threshold and should be so designated: Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam. 

The 2013 Annual Report includes chapters on eight countries that are on USCIRF’s Tier 2, which replaces the previously-used “Watch List” designation.  These nations are: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos, and Russia.  USCIRF found the violations these governments engage in or tolerate are particularly severe and meet at least one criterion, but not all, of IRFA’s three-fold “systematic, ongoing, egregious” CPC standard.

The Annual Report also discusses religious freedom concerns in other countries USCIRF monitored during the year, including Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Ethiopia, Turkey, Venezuela, and various Western European nations.  In addition, the report includes in-depth analysis of U.S. international religious freedom policy, along with the following thematic issues: Constitutional Changes; Severe Religious Freedom Violations by Non-State Actors; Increasing Adoption and Enforcement of Laws against Blasphemy and Defamation of Religions; Imprisonment of Conscientious Objectors; Legal Retreat from Religious Freedom in Post-Communist Countries; Kidnapping and Forced Religious De-Conversion in Japan; and Religious Freedom Issues in International Organizations.

...that police detained over 900 people from Beijing’s Shouwang Church last year for trying to hold outdoor worship services? 

For the past two years, Shouwang members have tried to hold weekly services in Beijing parks only to face repeated detentions, the loss of jobs and residency permits and, in the case of one young woman, sexual abuse during police detention.  All ten of Shouwang church’s leaders remain in home detention to this day.    

Shouwang was the largest of Beijing’s Protestant “house churches,” so-called because they often begin in people’s homes before seeking more permanent gathering space.  Protestant ‘house churches’ in China are illegal because they refuse, for both theological and political reasons, to join the state-approved Three-Self Protestant Movement (TSPM) or the China Christian Council (CCC).

Shouwang Church at its height had over 1,000 members and was meeting in a Beijing restaurant before the landlord terminated its lease after being pressured by authorities. Before resorting to organizing public worship activities, the Church was forced to change its headquarters more than 20 times and was prevented from buying or renting a church building.

The effort to break up the Shouwang Church was not an isolated incident but part of a plan to reduce the visibility of large, independent Protestant churches and curtail their  missionary, educational, and charitable work. In the past year, the NGO ChinaAid published several government directives, including a ten-year plan to “eradicate” churches that refuse to affiliate with the TSPM or the CCC and orders to limit their outreach among university students. During the past year, public security officials in Hebei, Sichuan, Guangdong, and Xinjiang provinces raided independent Protestant churches, briefly detained or beat members of the congregations, and told them to join the TSPM if they wanted to remain open.

Millions of Chinese manifest their beliefs openly and senior government officials have praised the role religious communities can play in promoting “economic and social development” and "socialist principles.” New directives also were issued last year to allow approved religious groups to conduct some charitable activities. These are positive developments that were unthinkable just two decades ago. Nevertheless, as the ongoing efforts to disband the Shouwang Church demonstrate, the Chinese government continues to see the growth of religious communities who resist its oversight as potential threats that need to be "eradicated."  

...that two years later there still have been no prosecutions stemming from Nigeria’s presidential post-election violence that killed more than 800?

In April 2011, immediately following the re-election of President Goodluck Jonathan, more than 800 people were killed and 65,000 displaced in three days of rioting in Nigeria’s northern states.  Protests by supporters of the main opposition candidate, Muhammadu Buhari -- a northern Muslim who lost the presidential election, quickly turned to violence against Christians who were thought to be sympathetic to President Jonathan, a Christian.  While political issues sparked the violence, its consequences were severe violations of religious freedom, including individuals killed because of their religious identity and churches and mosques attacked.  The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) reported that at least 187 people were killed, 243 people injured, and more than 430 churches burned or destroyed.  Some of the worst post-election violence between Muslims and Christians occurred in Kaduna State.  Human Rights Watch reports that more than 500 were killed in Kaduna State, the vast majority of whom were Muslims. 

Despite the number of deaths, no prosecutions were undertaken at the federal or state level against the perpetrators of violence.  Federal-state jurisdictional disputes and a lack of political will continue to pose a challenge to address the violence, its underlying causes and lack of prosecutions.  The inaction of the Nigerian government at all levels fostersa climate of impunity and signals that future violence will go unpunished. 

Since 1999, sectarian and inter-communal violence in Nigeria has resulted in more than 14,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands displaced, with thousands of churches, mosques, businesses, vehicles, private homes, and other structures destroyed.  Almost universally, individuals identified as perpetrators have not been prosecuted.  Of the more than 14,000 sectarian deaths, USCIRF has confirmed that fewer than 200 individuals have been prosecuted for their involvement in sectarian violence, despite the fact that video and photographic evidence of sectarian conflicts that identify perpetrators are on the internet. 

In response to religion-related violence, federal and state officials have formed more than a dozen commissions of inquiry to review the causes of the violence and make recommendations to prevent further violence.  However, commission recommendations rarely are implemented, and these commissions often fault the government for failing to implement the recommendations put forth by previous commissions.

. . . that Uzbekistan pressures neighboring Central Asian countries to return asylum seekers who have fled Uzbek government repression of their religious freedoms?

Since Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991, its government has systematically and egregiously violated freedom of religion or belief, as well as other human rights.  The Uzbek government harshly penalizes individuals for independent religious activity regardless of their religious affiliation. Thousands remain imprisoned as alleged extremists, including many who reportedly are denied due process and tortured. Since 2006, the State Department has designated Uzbekistan a “Country of Particular Concern” for these egregious violations, but since 2009 has placed a waiver on taking any action as a consequence of the CPC designation. 

In June 2011, Uzbekistan successfully pressured Kazakhstan to forcibly return 28 Uzbek asylum seekers, who had sought refuge in Kazakhstan claiming persecution for their Muslim beliefs.   In June 2012, the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) found that it had been “sufficiently established” that Uzbekistan has a “significant risk of torture … in particular for individuals practicing their faith outside of the official framework.”  The CAT found that the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment had been violated when these 28 Uzbek asylum seekers were forcibly returned.  The Committee noted that the men were detained as soon as they arrived back in Uzbekistan and that some had received prison terms of more than ten years. 

Another Uzbek now has fled Uzbekistan fearing for his safety. Imam Sulaimanov had led a mosque in Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent, but fled the country in 2000 due to pressure by the Uzbek government.  He is seeking political asylum in Kyrgyzstan, but Kyrgyz secret police detained him in October 2012 and since January 2013 he has been fighting extradition to Uzbekistan.  According to observers, he faces torture and conviction on fabricated charges of 'extremism' if he is returned.  Kyrgyzstan's human rights Ombudsperson told the NGO Forum 18 that "extraditing Sulaimanov back to Uzbekistan would violate our international human rights obligations…I will use all my authority and influence to prevent Sulaimanov's extradition."  However, Kyrgyzstan's General Prosecutor's Office, in response to a question from Forum 18 about sending someone to Uzbekistan where they might face torture, responded: "Let them [the Uzbek authorities] do it. It doesn't bother me at all."

Sulaimanov’s court appeal against his extradition was upheld in March 2013, Forum 18 noted.  Although the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recognized Sulaimanov as a refugee, he was detained again and Kyrgyz secret police sent him to a prison in Osh which is located close to the Uzbek border.  The Kyrgyz secret police would tell Forum 18 only that Sulaimanov currently is held in the Osh Region NSC Investigation Prison.  Past Uzbek citizens have been kidnapped from the Osh region and returned to Uzbekistan. 

…that April 8 is Yom Ha Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, but acts of anti-Semitism still occur in Europe?

In Russia, xenophobia and intolerance, including anti-Semitism, fuel hate crimes by skinhead groups.  In Belarus, the anti-Jewish utterances of President Lukashenko and the state media are coupled by a failure to identify or punish the vandals of Jewish cemeteries and other property.  Echoing Hungary’s Nazi era, the leader of its third largest party recently urged the government to create a list of Jews posing “a national security threat.”  Fortunately, Hungary’s government, including its Parliament, condemned this statement.

Elsewhere in Europe, since 2000, anti-Jewish graffiti increasingly has appeared in Paris and Berlin, Madrid and Amsterdam, London and Rome, and synagogues have been vandalized or set ablaze in France, Greece, and Sweden. In France, “unprecedented violence” took place last year, according to a recent report issued by the security unit of France’s Jewish community. There were 614 anti-Semitic incidents in 2012, compared to 389 in 2011.   Earlier this February, a woman was arrested in Toulouse, France after trying to stab a student at the Ohr HaTorah Jewish day school where four Jews were shot and killed in March 2012. In Greece, synagogues and Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated, and the rise of the Golden Dawn political party is deeply troubling. In Malmo, Sweden, physical attacks have fueled a Jewish exodus. 

Perpetrators range from neo-Nazis or members of skinhead groups to those distorting the religion of Islam to advance their own intolerant agendas. 

Four factors compound the problem. First, European officials remain reluctant to identify the perpetrators’ ideological or religious motivations. Second, surveys show that negative attitudes towards Jews remain widespread among Europe’s population. Third, these surveys confirm that some of this bias reveals itself through certain criticisms of the state of Israel.   While no country is beyond reproach, when criticism includes language intended to delegitimize Israel, demonize its people, and apply to it standards to which no other state is held, it becomes anti-Semitic. Finally, a number of European governments and political parties have supported restrictions on vital religious practices.  At least four countries – Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland – ban kosher slaughter.  Authorities and political forces in Norway and Germany also have tried to ban infant male circumcision.

...that in Japan over the past two decades families and “professional deprogrammers” have abducted thousands of individuals to force them to renounce their chosen beliefs?

Most of those abducted have been from the Unification Church, Jehovah’s Witness, and other new religious movements.  Abductees describe being confined against their will, suffering psychological harassment and physical and, in some cases, sexual abuse.  In some extreme cases, individuals were held for years, including the 12 year confinement of Unification Church member Toru Goto. 

The Japanese Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion and protects citizens against false imprisonment, and Japan has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).  Nevertheless, Japanese authorities continue to see these cases as “family matters” and are reluctant to intervene.  In most abduction cases, police and judicial authorities neither investigate nor indict those responsible for these acts, often citing lack of evidence.   

Religious groups have found some success in waging legal battles against those who carry out the abductions, and the past decade has seen a dramatic drop in the number of abductions for the purpose of de-conversion.  Forced de-conversions among Jehovah’s Witness largely stopped after an August 2002 court case declared their “deprogramming” illegal and several other cases resulted in civil judgments against “professional deprogrammers.”

The legal challenges made by the Unification Church have not been as successful, and there continue to be reports of abductions of members each year.  However, in March, 2013 the civil case of Toru Goto opened with testimony about his 12 year confinement during which family members tortured and allegedly nearly starved him to death.  The case has garnered media attention both in Japan and internationally, as well as the attention of Japanese legislators.  A judgment in favor of Toru Goto may continue the decrease in the number of forced de-conversion cases, as well as motivate police and judicial authorities to pursue criminal charges against those who kidnap and mistreat members of new religious movements.       

…that Nowruz, the Persian or Iranian New Year, will be celebrated on March 21?

Nowruz marks the beginning of the year in the Iranian calendar during which families and friends in Iran and other countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, and other parts of the world celebrate both the New Year and the start of spring.  Nowruz is also the New Year for the nearly six million Baha’is throughout the world, including in Iran where they constitute the largest non-Muslim religious minority population.  Unfortunately, for Baha’is and so many others in Iran, the home of the majority of people celebrating Nowruz, there is little to celebrate.

Iran, a constitutional, theocratic republic, discriminates against its citizens on the basis of religion or belief. Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, many members of minority religious communities have fled Iran for fear of persecution, and those who remain face discrimination, arrest, imprisonment and even death.  The late February report that the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran issued underscores continued widespread and systematic violations of human rights and the ongoing intimidation, arrest and detention of religious minorities.

USCIRF Chair Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, testified before Congress at a March 15, 2013 Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission hearing, The Worsening Plight of Religious Minorities in Iran.  Dr. Lantos Swett highlighted that all of Iran’s religious minorities have had their rights violated -- from Baha’is and Zoroastrians to Christians and Jews, as well as Muslims belonging to minority Sufi and Sunni sects and even Muslims who are part of Iran’s Shi’a majority. Dissidents and human rights defenders increasingly have been subject to abuse and several have been sentenced to death for the capital crime of “waging war against God.” The government also continues to use its religious laws to silence reformers, including women’s rights activists and journalists, for exercising their internationally-protected rights to freedom of expression and religion or belief. Heightened anti-Semitism and repeated Holocaust denials by senior government officials have increased fear among Iran’s Jewish community, the largest – with the exception of Israel -- in the Middle East and North Africa. USCIRF’s recommendations include:

• The U.S. government should continue to designate Iran as a Country of Particular Concern or CPC and sanction Iran based on its systematic, egregious and ongoing violations of religious freedom;
• The United States should continue to identify Iranian officials responsible for particularly severe religious freedom abuses, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, freeze their assets and bar their entry into the United States;
• Congress should reauthorize the Lautenberg Amendment, a life-line for religious minorities trapped in Iran who wish to escape; and
• The United States should call on Iran to release all prisoners who have been jailed on account of their religion or belief, and drop all charges against those with cases pending.

...that since 1945 North Korea’s once-diverse and vibrant religious community has largely disappeared?

North Korea’s reactions to new sanctions, including its latest nuclear threats and declaration invalidating the 1953 Armistice ending the Korean War, have topped recent news.  Equally noteworthy is that today, March 11, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is focusing on North Korea’s deplorable human rights and religious freedom record. The UNHCR will be reviewing that record as they consider an international inquiry into possible crimes against humanity committed by one of the world’s most repressive regimes.  A vote on this resolution is expected later in March.

The North Korean government controls nearly every aspect of its citizens’ daily lives, including religious activity. North Korea seeks to guarantee that no religious group or belief can challenge the cult of personality surrounding the Kin family, often called Juche. All religious activity is either tightly controlled or actively suppressed.

Despite North Korean law that criminalizes leaving the country without state permission, over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of people fled to neighboring China and South Korea to escape persecution and famine. Over the past few years, refugees report that the government is imposing harsher penalties for repatriated North Koreans, the harshest treatment reportedly reserved for refugees suspected of becoming Christian, distributing illegal religious materials, or having ongoing contact with either South Korean humanitarian or religious organizations working in China. Refugees also continue to provide credible evidence that security forces use torture during interrogation sessions. Those suspected of religious conversation or contacts are sent to hard labor facilities designated for political prisoners.

In its 2012 report, USCIRF recommended that the U.S. government fully implement the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2008, which provides the agenda and tools to conduct human rights diplomacy in North Korea. Since 2001, the State Department has designated North Korea as a “country of particular concern,” (CPC) for its severe, egregious, and ongoing violations of religious freedom. 

...that the Ahmadi community will be excluded from upcoming elections in Pakistan?

Historic elections are scheduled to take place in Pakistan in Spring 2013.  However, members of the Ahmadi religious community will be prevented from voting for the next civilian government.   An executive order requires  Ahmadis to register separately  and vote as non-Muslims.   Chief Executive’s Order No. 15 , which President Musharraf issued in 2002, mandates a separate electoral system for the Ahmadi religious community.  Since Ahmadis consider themselves to be Muslim, the Executive Order discriminates against them on religious lines and disenfranchises them from the democratic process. 

With elections on the horizon, an individual has challenged this discriminatory provisionat the Supreme Court.  Removing this provision would allow Ahmadis to participate as equal citizens in Pakistan’s democratic process and remove one facet of the blatant discrimination under which this community suffers.   However, President Zardari could issue a new executive order at anytime.

In addition to this executive order, Ahmadis in Pakistan are subjected to severe legal restrictions and other forms of officially-sanctioned discrimination.  Ahmadis are prevented by law from engaging in the full practice of their faith and may face criminal charges for a range of religious practices, including the use of religious terminology.  In 1974, the constitution was amended to declare members of the Ahmadi religious community to be “non-Muslims.”  In 1984, basic acts of Ahmadi worship and interaction were made criminal offenses when sections B and C of Article 298 were added to the penal code.  These amendments criminalized Ahmadis “posing” as Muslims, calling their places of worship “mosques,” worshipping in non-Ahmadi mosques or public prayer rooms, performing the Muslim call to prayer, using the traditional Islamic greeting in public, or displaying the basic affirmations of the Muslim faith.  Over the past year, USCIRF has received reports of 10 Ahmadis being charged under Article 298. 

Anti-Ahmadi laws have helped to create a permissive climate for vigilante violence against members of this community.  USCIRF has received reports of 44 attacks targeting Ahmadis over the past year, with 22 resulting in the death of 23 individuals. In addition to attacks on individual Ahmadis, local police repeatedly have forced Ahmadis to remove Qu’ranic scripture from mosques and minarets.  In addition, there have been multiple instances of Ahmadi graves being desecrated, some by the local police.