USCIRF Vice Chair Nina Shea To Moderate Religious Freedom Day Panel

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 16, 2006

Contact:
Anne Johnson, Communications Director, (202) 523-3240, ext. 27

WASHINGTON - U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Vice Chair Nina Shea will moderate a panel on the status of religious freedom around the world as part of Religious Freedom Day on Capitol Hill, which will take place in the Senate Dirksen Office Building, Room G50, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 20.

Senator Rick Santorum, Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, is hosting the event.

Other speakers and panelists include John Hanford, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom and ex-officio USCIRF Commissioner, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former USCIRF Commissioner John Bolton, Senators Sam Brownback and Norm Coleman, Congressman Trent Franks and Congressman Todd Akin, William J. Murray of the Religious Freedom Coalition and Paul Marshall of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor the status of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief abroad, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international instruments, and to give independent policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State and the Congress.