This Op-Ed appeared originally in the Atlantic Council's blog, UkraineAlert, on January 31, 2018.

By Clifford D. May and Thomas J. Reese, S.J.

(Atlantic Council) - In 2017, for the first time ever, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that Russia be designated a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for the religious repression occurring there and for its exportation of such repression to Ukraine. USCIRF’s primary role is to monitor countries engaging in or tolerating "systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom,” and to recommend those countries that should be designated as CPCs. CPC designations open the door to a wide array of possible sanctions, though implementation is at the discretion of the State Department. Even without sanctions, the designation alone serves as a powerful signal to religious freedom violators of US disapproval. In its most recent announcement of CPC designations on January 4, however, the State Department did not include Russia. 

In December, we traveled to Ukraine to learn more about the conditions of religious freedom in the Russian-occupied areas of Crimea and the Donbas. What we saw and heard confirmed the reality of Russian persecution and harassment of religious minorities in Russian-occupied Luhansk and Donetsk, the so-called “People’s Republics.” In these regions, religious freedom appears to be at the whim of armed militias untethered to any legal authority.

Religious freedom in Russian-occupied Crimea is also greatly curtailed. According to the United Nations, there were roughly 2,200 religious organizations, both registered and unregistered, in Crimea before the 2014 occupation. As of September 2017, only 800 remained. In June 2017, after the Russian Supreme Court decision to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses as extremist, all twenty-two local Witnesses organizations in Crimea, representing 8,000 congregants, were officially banned as well.

Although Russian repression of Crimean Tatars is mainly motivated by political rather than religious concerns, it disrupts Crimean Tatar religious activities and institutions. Russian authorities have co-opted the spiritual life of the Muslim Crimean Tatar minority and arrested or driven into exile its community representatives.

Oppression through the judicial process also continues apace. For example, in August 2017, the main church space of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in Simferopol, the administrative capital of Crimea, was seized by bailiffs enforcing a February 2017 court decision transferring its ownership to the Crimean Ministry of Property and Land Relations. According to the United Nations, five UOC churches have been officially seized or shut down since 2014. Meanwhile, Russia’s laws on religion and extremism, strengthened in July 2016, have been used to punish believers of various churches, including Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists, for the exercise of their faith.

Although the worst excesses in the Donbas have declined since 2015, Christian minorities remain the subject of raids, harassment, fines, and official slander. In August 2017, Luhansk security forces recorded themselves raiding two Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Halls, at the end of which they claimed to have found leaflets promoting Nazism and collaboration with Ukrainian intelligence. If this incident inspires déjà vu, it is because the Russian police were caught on video in 2016 planting evidence against Jehovah’s Witnesses.

A prime example of how religious activists and scholars can fall afoul of the authorities in the Russian-occupied areas is the case of Ihor Kozlovsky, sixty-three. Kozlovsky was a professor at the university in Donetsk who studied local religious movements. Active in Protestant Christian life in the area, he had earlier worked in the regional administration, dealing with religious affairs.

In January 2016, he was kidnapped by Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) security forces and accused of storing weapons in his apartment. The forces entered his apartment and searched it for several hours while terrifying his adult son, who suffers from Down Syndrome and paralysis and was alone at the time.

In May 2017, Kozlovsky was convicted of weapons possession and sentenced to nearly three years in prison. His wife and son were forced to flee to Ukrainian government-controlled territory. As far as we could tell on our trip, he was the only religious prisoner in the DPR under continuing detention and his only “crime” was civic activity on behalf of religious groups. Just after Christmas, however, he was released.

More than ever, USCIRF believes that the United States should take a stand for the religious minorities that Russia is oppressing in Russia, as well as in Crimea and the Russian-occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk. The commissioners strongly recommend that Russia be designated a Country of Particular Concern for its severe religious freedom violations, and that appropriate sanctions be imposed against the Russian Federation, including under the Magnitsky Act and the new provisions available in the Global Magnitsky Act.

(Clifford D. May and Thomas J. Reese, S.J. are commissioners on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.)

Photo credit: Screenshot Hromadske International

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 24, 2018

USCIRF Welcomes Confirmation of New Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom

USCIRF Chairman Mark says, “The commission looks forward to working with Ambassador Brownback in advancing the U.S. government’s promotion of international religious freedom”
 

WASHINGTON, DC -- The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) welcomes the confirmation today by the Senate of a new Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. The White House nominated Governor Sam Brownback, who served in the Senate from 1996-2011, for the position in July of last year.

“The Senate’s confirmation of a new ambassador today could not have come soon enough,” said USCIRF Chairman Daniel Mark. “We are witnessing immense challenges to religious freedom around the globe. We need to utilize every resource available to confront these challenges, including the office of the ambassador-at-large. USCIRF looks forward to working with Ambassador Brownback in advancing the U.S. government’s promotion of international religious freedom.”

While in the Senate, Gov. Brownback supported religious freedom and human rights for all, serving as co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. He was a key sponsor of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act that established USCIRF and the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, which he will now lead.

 “USCIRF is eager to work closely with Gov. Brownback in his new role as ambassador-at-large and ex officio member of the Commission,” said Chairman Mark.

###

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission, the first of its kind in the world. USCIRF reviews the facts and circumstances of religious freedom violations abroad and makes policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and the Congressional leadership of both political parties. To interview a Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at [email protected] or Isaac Six, Associate Director of Congressional Affairs ([email protected] +1-202-786-0606).

This Op-Ed appeared originally in Religion News Service on January 11, 2018.

By former USCIRF Commissioners Sandra Jolley and Kristina Arriaga

(RNS) — For most pastors, the beginning of a new year is filled with the promise of youth programs, baptisms, and marriages. Instead, Pastor Andrew Brunson — Presbyterian cleric in Turkey, American citizen, and pawn in an international game of hostage diplomacy — is spending it in a Turkish jail. Since he was detained in October 2016, his life has been arbitrarily suspended.

Representing the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, we met with Brunson in Kiriklar Prison on Oct. 5, near the city of Izmir. Only relatives or embassy officials are allowed to visit. We are the only other Americans to have seen him.

We were in Istanbul when we were granted permission to visit. Within 24 hours we flew to Izmir, spent a restless night at a local hotel and, before the sun came up the next day, we headed to Kiriklar. Dressed plainly, as instructed, we walked into the prison, placed our shoes in plastic baskets and walked through a metal detector. The painted cinderblock walls of the unexpectedly clean entrance featured bizarrely cheery art motifs.

In the visitors’ area, plastic beaded necklaces made by inmates were for sale. Nearby, a prison guard sat at a desk, inspecting grocery bags filled with clothes he received from inmates’ relatives. During the winter, it gets cold in Kiriklar, and prisoners depend on their relatives for clothing.

After inspection, we were escorted into a room padded with black foam and divided by a rectangular Formica table at the center of which, attached by a beaded metal chain, was the only pen available. Before we came into the room, we had been allowed to rip out three sheets of lined paper from a notebook. We waited in silence on narrow cheap plastic chairs that creaked as we shuffled.

Several minutes later, we heard the loud, metallic, heavy clang of a gate that opened and closed. The door to the visiting room flung open and in walked a pale, slender version of the Andrew Brunson we had only seen in photos. Since his imprisonment he has lost over 50 pounds.

What happened then was an almost surreal hour of discussion with a man still in shock at what had happened to him. How could a NATO ally do this to an American citizen? How could this happen in a country where he had spent more than two decades of his life helping people? What were the charges against him? When might he get a trial? If convicted, will he be in jail for the rest of his life?

Brunson asked us these questions because the only thing certain about his life is the four walls that surround him and define the limits of his world. He eats, sleeps and lives in that cell, and is allowed only to leave it once a week for a scheduled visit with his wife or a consular officer. Most of these visits are conducted in a room divided by a Plexiglas wall.

He has had no due process. In fact, the Turkish government, for almost a year at the point of our meeting, has given him no information about the charges against him and no court date. The case against him seems to be based on secret evidence and a secret witness that allege his involvement in trying to overthrow the Turkish government — a charge which he flatly denies.

Brunson initially was held with more than 20 other men in a cell built to accommodate 8 people. He now is in a cell with two others, but he is the only American, the only English speaker, and the only Christian in the prison. He lives in a world of physical isolation and psychological dislocation.

Since the attempted coup in 2016, much has changed in Turkey. Overall human rights, including the freedoms of expression and association, have worsened notably. Arbitrary arrests, explained by “involvement” in the attempted coup, are in the tens of thousands.

In the chapter on Turkey in USCIRF’s 2017 Annual Report, we state that “no religious community — including the majority Sunni Muslim community — has full legal status, and all are subject to state controls limiting their rights to maintain places of worship, train clergy, and offer religious education.”

It is reprehensible that Turkey chose to arrest an American Christian cleric who for more than two decades was fulfilling his religious duties by serving his congregants and others in need. In today’s Turkey, however, it seems your rights disappear when secret allegations are whispered.

Post-coup Turkey faces a number of serious problems with which it must deal, both domestically and internationally. Pastor Brunson need not be one of them. Turkey already has stolen more than a year of his life. We cannot let it steal all his tomorrows.

(Sandra Jolley and Kristina Arriaga are the Vice Chairwomen of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The views expressed in this opinion piece do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)

Photo credit: World Witness