While Russia’s foreign policy was frequently discussed during this election year, Russian policy at home merits similar scrutiny by the American people and the incoming administration. President Putin signed a package of laws in July that includes the most repressive legislation since the Soviet era against the right of freedom of religion or belief. Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, the package includes a particularly chilling measure, especially for evangelical Protestants and others who actively share their faith. The new measure makes it a crime to engage in religious activities that range from preaching and teaching to religious publishing, anywhere in Russia besides government-approved sites.

After Putin signed the package into law, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), on which we serve as commissioners, condemned its enactment. The United States, its people, and the world community should do likewise today.

Unfortunately, this is hardly the first attempt during the Putin era to equate peaceful religious behavior with terrorism or extremism. For nearly a decade, Russian authorities have targeted innocent people of faith by deploying against them an anti-extremism law that requires neither using nor advocating violence for actions to be labeled “extremism.”  Under this law, authorities have arrested people ranging from peaceful readers of Turkish Muslim theologian Said Nursi to the pacifist Jehovah’s Witnesses for distributing their literature. Convicted individuals face up to four years in prison.

The new anti-terrorism package builds on this shameful legacy by increasing the prison terms included in the extremism law.

In addition, the new law targets “missionary” activity in several ways.

It allows only religious organizations that officially have registered with the Russian state to engage in such work. Many religious groups, particularly evangelical Protestants, do not register because registration is against their faith or because Russian authorities simply refuse to register them.

The new law also restricts the kinds of beliefs that will be honored or can be shared with others. For example, it bans even discussion of “refusal on religious grounds of medical assistance,” which could be used against Christian Scientists or Jehovah’s Witnesses due to their views on medicine. The law also bans “motivating citizens to refuse to fulfill their civic duties set by law." Such a ban may be used against those who conscientiously object to military service based on their religion.

Finally, the new measure limits missionary activity to land and buildings that registered religious associations own, as well as to their pilgrimage sites, cemeteries, and those educational institutions used for religious ceremonies.

Thus, door-to-door discussion of beliefs could be banned, as could the sharing of beliefs in residential buildings. Since evangelicals attend house churches, many will fall under the law’s reach.

Along with possible prison terms, individuals deemed to have violated the law could face fines approaching 1 million rubles. The fine for organizations ranges from 100,000 to 1 million rubles ($1500 to $15,000). Since unregistered groups are considered illegal entities, individual members also could be prosecuted.

Prosecutions already have begun.

On July 22, Aleksei Telius, a Baptist pastor who organized a children’s summer camp in Noyabrsk, was fined 5,000 rubles. On August 14, Donald Ossewaarde, an American Baptist, was fined 40,000 rubles for holding religious services in his own home in Oryol.

Why are Putin and his allies promoting such laws?

They wish to extend authoritarian control by subjugating alternative sources of authority. Under the guise of national security, they allege that certain groups pose a cultural as well as physical threat to Russia. They deem the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate the nation’s cultural and religious repository and treat most other religious groups as rivals and dangers to Russia’s unity.

Such actions violate the universal right to freedom of religion guaranteed in international documents such as Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Before the new law was enacted, significant public opposition arose within Russia’s Protestant, Muslim, and human rights communities and tens of thousands of Russians signed a petition against its passage. Now that it has passed, it’s time for the world — starting with the American people, the U.S. government, and the next U.S. administration — to raise its voice against this latest retreat to a dark Soviet past.

Clifford D. May and John Ruskay are commissioners at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

The contrast was poignant and powerful.  As we sat in September with a global gathering of parliamentarians in the majestic Bundestag in Berlin, we recalled how more than 80 years ago, Germany’s chancellor had extinguished freedom and begun sowing the seeds for the Holocaust.   On that same September day, we watched German Chancellor Angela Merkel stand in this historic seat of her country’s Parliament and repudiate this genocidal past by denouncing violations of religious freedom worldwide. 

There is plenty to denounce.  Billions of people live in countries that perpetrate or tolerate severe religious freedom abuses.  Such abuses range from restrictions on building houses of worship to detaining and torturing people based on their religion to perpetrating murder and even genocide, which the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) commits against Yazidis, Christians, Shi’a Muslims and others in Iraq and Syria.

The stakes are high, and not just for religious freedom.  When governments brutally repress entire groups, such as Muslims in parts of Russia or China, it can be a recipe for frustration, discontent, instability, and in some cases violence.

As members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), we see a global crisis in need of a global answer. We were in Berlin precisely for that purpose, participating in the third meeting of the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief (IPPFoRB), a remarkable and blossoming grassroots coalition to address this problem worldwide.

This month marks the IPPFoRB’s second anniversary. Gathering in November 2014 at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, more than 30 parliamentarians from various countries formed this network and signed a historic Charter for Freedom of Religion or Belief (Oslo Charter) pledging to advance this pivotal right for all.  Its second meeting, held in New York in September 2015, included 100 parliamentarians from more than 50 nations as well as diplomats and religious leaders.

The Oslo Charter is based on Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which reads as follows:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

This voluntary network’s approach may be summed up in the following steps: 

• Bring together as many parliamentarians as possible from across the globe committed to advancing freedom of religion or belief.
• Identify countries plagued by religious freedom violations and jointly respond by raising concerns with and seeking improvements from responsible governments.
• Share with each other the information parliamentarians need to educate, inform, and persuade their own people and governments to act in freedom’s cause, and support other parliamentarians around the world who stand up for religious freedom at personal risk to themselves.
• Build regional groups of parliamentarians committed to combatting religious persecution and promoting religious freedom.

In Berlin, we saw accomplished and committed legislators from 60 nations and diverse political and religious backgrounds working together. Among them was a Christian legislator from majority-Muslim Pakistan, who has been serving for 14 years and concentrating on women’s issues and matters of forced conversion.  We met a former parliamentarian from Burma, a Buddhist-majority nation, who had been elected to its parliament but had his citizenship revoked and thus was precluded from running again because he was a member of Burma’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.  And we met an inspirational parliamentarian from Iraq, a member of its persecuted Yazidi minority.

Since IPPFoRB’s inception, its parliamentarians have written advocacy letters to heads of state and other high officials of countries that are serious religious freedom violators, including Burma, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Sudan, and Vietnam. 

In August of this year, a small group of religiously diverse parliamentarians from five continents  made its first fact-finding and solidarity visit, traveling to Burma, a nation emerging from 50 years of military rule. There they met with government officials, members of parliament, and religious and civil society groups, confronted religious freedom violations, and discussed concrete and workable solutions.

It is one thing for one nation or its officials to advocate for this fundamental freedom, as the United States has done for many years. But it is quite another for people from many nations to stand together in this cause.  When parliamentarians across borders and oceans join together, it sends an unmistakable message: religious freedom matters, not just to one nation or culture, but to all of humanity.

This was the most welcome message that echoed throughout the halls of the historic Bundestag.

Jackie Wolcott and Sandra Jolley are commissioners at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As coalition forces begin the liberation of Mosul, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) notes that November 13 is the one-year anniversary of the liberation of Sinjar from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). 

ISIL’s two-week August 2014 assault on Sinjar and the Tal Afar districts of northern Iraq’s Nineveh Province resulted in the deaths of more than 5,000 Yazidi men, the rape and enslavement of 5,000 Yazidi women, and the displacement of at least 200,000 civilians. ISIL also destroyed Yazidi temples and shrines and looted and demolished Yazidi homes.

Likewise, ISIL’s occupation of Mosul resulted in thousands of victims and its liberation could result in hundreds of thousands of refugees.

“ISIL’s unspeakable crimes in northern Iraq have permanently altered the country’s religious landscape, including the decimation of the Yazidis, a minority religious community which was given only two options: convert or die,” said USCIRF Chair Thomas J. Reese, S.J. “The ongoingmilitary offensive against ISIL in Mosul will liberate the city, but it may also increase the number of refugees and further aggravate sectarian tensions in the region. ISIL’s crimes must not lead to massive retaliation against Sunni Muslims. USCIRF acknowledges the administration’s efforts to return people to their homes and secure vulnerable communities. USCIRF also urges the U.S. government and the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL to work to develop measures to protect freedom of religion or belief.”

ISIL’s violent religious and political ideology allows no religious diversity or freedom of thought or expression. USCIRF welcomed the State Department’s declaration in March 2016 that Yazidis, Christians, and Shi’a Muslims in Iraq and Syria are victims of genocide by ISIL. USCIRF continues to urge the U.S. government to call for a referral by the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court to investigate ISIL’s violations in Iraq and Syria.

USCIRF urges the U.S. government to initiate an effort among relevant UN agencies, NGOs, and the Global Coalition to fund and develop programs that bolster religious tolerance, alleviate sectarian tensions, and promote respect for religious freedom and related rights for refugees in host countries.

For more information on religious freedom conditions in Iraq, see USCIRF’s 2016 Annual Report (in English, in Arabic, and in Kurdish).

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at [email protected] or 202-786-0615.