FOR YOUR INFORMATION

October 27, 2015 | Robert P. George and Eric P. Schwartz

The following op-ed appeared in The Hill on October 27, 2015

Today, Oct. 27, is International Religious Freedom Day, which this year marks the 17^th anniversary of the enactment of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA).

IRFA created a first-ever international religious freedom office in the State Department.  It also established the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), on which we serve, as an independent, non-partisan entity to monitor religious freedom abroad and make recommendations to the president, secretary of State, and Congress.

Less than two weeks ago, on Oct. 16, President Obama signed a bill -- passed by Congress on Oct. 6 -- reauthorizing USCIRF for another four years. 

We are grateful that Congress and the president have enabled USCIRF to continue its important work at a time of maximum need:

According to several Pew studies, most of the people in the world live in countries that seriously violate this liberty.  

As we indicated in our latest annual report, which was released this past spring, religious freedom conditions worldwide have not improved, and situations remain particularly dismal in countries we cited as perpetrating or tolerating the worst abuses.   Such nations include those our Commission recommended that the State Department designate as “countries of particular concern” (CPC), marking them as the world’s most severe violators.   They also included those we listed as Tier 2 countries due to violations that, while not rising to CPC status, remain serious.

When we reviewed the 16 countries we recommended last year for CPC status, we saw little improvement and in many cases, signs of further deterioration.  In addition to recommending again this year these 16 as the most severe violators, the Commission was compelled to add a 17^th country to our list – Central African Republic. 

Regarding Tier 2 countries, religious freedom conditions likewise remain troubling.  Russia’s continued failure to respect religious minorities at home and in territories it has occupied merits its Tier 2 status.  

This process of publicly designating the worst violators is a valuable tool in the effort to promote religious freedom.  By bearing witness in this public way, we keep faith with victims, rally support for their rights, and bring pressure to bear against government violators by publicly shaming them for abusing basic rights. 

Across the world, religious freedom violators consist of state and non-state actors.

Some state actors, like China and North Korea, are secular tyrannies which suppress religious groups across the board.   Others, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, enthrone a single religion or religious interpretation, while persecuting those embracing alternatives.

These state actors abuse religious freedom in many ways, including imprisoning people due to their religious beliefs, actions, or advocacy.  

China, for example, handed Ilham Tohti, a respected Uighur Muslim scholar, a life sentence for alleged “separatism.”  Iran keeps hundreds of people, from Baha’is to Christians, Sufi and Sunni Muslims to Shi’a Muslim reformers and clerics, imprisoned for reasons relating to religion.  

Not even electoral democracies are immune from holding religious prisoners.  In Pakistan, which a USCIRF delegation visited for the first time in March, more people like Aasia Bibi, a Christian farm hand, are on death row or serving life sentences for blasphemy than anywhere else.  

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws not only violate freedom of religion and expression; they embolden extremists to assault perceived transgressors.  These attackers have increasingly victimized Pakistan’s religious minorities, from Shi’a to Christians, Hindus to Ahmadis.

For these reasons, we have urged the State Department to designate Pakistan a CPC. 

Over the past year, non-state actors have been fueling some of the worst humanitarian crises of our time.  Among them is ISIL. From Yazidis to Christians, Shi’a to dissenting Sunnis, no religious group has been free of ISIL’s depredations in Syria and Iraq.   

Beyond Iraq and Syria, non-state actors have been wreaking similar havoc.  

Boko Haram has cut a wide path of terror across Nigeria, which a USCIRF delegation visited in May. 

In Burma, which a USCIRF delegation visited in August 2014, Buddhist extremists have assaulted Rohingya Muslims.   

And in Central African Republic, fighting between Christians and Muslims has destroyed nearly every mosque in the country.

And in many of these countries, governments – by aligning themselves with particular religious groups and discriminating against others in their efforts to sustain their power – have fostered conditions leading to abuses by non-state actors from the Middle East to Asia. 

As we mark International Religious Freedom Day, we believe that in spite of the bleak landscape for liberty, the desire for greater freedom burns brightly in people’s hearts.    

Thanks to timely action by our executive and legislative branches, USCIRF will keep promoting religious freedom, prioritizing the sacred rights and solemn duties of conscience. 

George serves as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).  Schwartz serves as a USCIRF vice chairman.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 21, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) welcomed the October 14 release by the U.S. State Department of its International Religious Freedom Report (IRF Report) for 2014.  The IRF Report is required by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA), the same law that established USCIRF.

“The IRF Report is a comprehensive resource documenting religious freedom violations in almost 200 countries and territories and highlighting some of the thousands of prisoners of conscience who languish unjustly in prisons around the world solely because of their religion or belief,” said USCIRF Chairman Robert P. George.  “We commend the State Department, particularly the Office of International Religious Freedom, led by Ambassador-at-Large David Saperstein, for the significant effort that went into compiling this report,” said Chairman George.

IRFA also requires the United States annually to designate as “countries of particular concern,” or CPCs, those governments that “engage in or tolerate” systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, and to take action to encourage improvements in each CPC country.  IRFA provides a range of options for such action, from bilateral agreements to sanctions. “Now that the IRF Report has been released, the next step is for the State Department to promptly designate the worst violators as CPCs and to leverage those designations to press for much-needed reforms in those countries,” said Chairman George.

In July 2014, the State Department designated nine nations as CPCs under IRFA:   Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.  USCIRF’s 2015 annual report, released in April, recommended that these countries be re-designated as CPCs, and also called for eight additional designations:  Central African Republic, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, and Vietnam. 

“USCIRF urges the State Department to continue the current nine CPC designations,” said Chairman George.  “We also urge the State Department to further expand its CPC list to reflect the severe violations occurring in other countries, such as Pakistan, which USCIRF has called the worst situation in the world for religious freedom for countries not currently designated by the U.S. government as CPCs,” said Chairman George.  “The just-released IRF Report leaves no doubt that the egregious nature of the violations in Pakistan warrant a CPC designation,” continued Chairman George.

Read USCIRF’s 2015 Annual Report.  

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

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

October 14, 2015 | Mary Ann Glendon and Katrina Lantos Swett

The following op-ed appeared in the Atlantic Council on October 14, 2015. This op-ed also appeared in Newsweek. 

"We cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated," US President Barack Obama said on September 28 at the UN General Assembly. He was condemning Russia's annexation of Crimea and its aggressive moves in eastern Ukraine.

Much of the world has decried these acts and their most visible consequences: at least 8,000 dead, 1.5 million internally displaced, and nearly a million made refugees. Yet we must not ignore another aspect of Russia's actions in Ukraine—serious violations of the right of freedom of religion or belief.

By any measure, this is a made-in-the-Kremlin problem. Russian President Vladimir Putin's government views the country's security through the lens of national identity, with a Kremlin-compliant Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church as its dominant religious and cultural expression. This view serves as a pretext for trampling upon religious diversity and freedom within Russia and now Ukraine.

After invading Crimea in March 2014, Russia ordered Crimea's religious groups, which number about 1,500, to register with Moscow under its religion law or lose their legal operating status. They face a bleak choice: Register under an onerous and costly process, or forfeit the right to open bank accounts, own property, invite foreign guests, and publish literature.

Russia also has targeted Crimea's religious minorities through its notorious anti-extremism law, which defines "extremism" as merely asserting the superiority of one's religious beliefs. This law does not require the threat or use of violence for the prosecution of individuals or the banning of Islamic and other religious texts.

Authorities have raided Muslim Crimean Tatar homes, mosques, and schools, as well as the Kingdom Halls of the Jehovah's Witnesses. They have detained imams and imposed fines simply for possessing Islamic and Jehovah's Witness texts banned under Russia's extremism law. They have accused the Majlis, the Crimean Tatar representative body, of extremism, and harass its members, while expelling two Turkish imams from Crimea.

Other than the Orthodox Church's Moscow Patriarchate, no religious community in Crimea has remained unscathed.

In March 2014, Rabbi Mikhail Kapustin of Simferopol was forced to flee Crimea after denouncing Russian actions. His synagogue was defaced by a swastika and a month later, vandals defaced Sevastopol's monument to 4,200 Jews murdered by the Nazis in July 1942.

Christian churches and leaders not affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate also have faced abuse and violence. Those within the Ukrainian Orthodox Patriarchate in Crimea have endured mob and arson attacks. By late 2014, clergy without Russian citizenship, including Greek and Roman Catholics as well as Kyiv Patriarchate clergy, were forced into exile. The home of the Kyiv Patriarchate's Bishop of Simferopol and Crimea was burned down.

Pro-Russian forces have visited similar abuses in the Donbas since Russian-backed paramilitary groups seized territory and proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) last year.

Among these forces is the 4,000-man Orthodox Army, once headed by a Russian military intelligence officer and funded by a Russian oligarch.

These forces confiscated Jehovah's Witness, Evangelical, and Pentecostal houses of worship and schools, and perpetrated church attacks, abductions, and assaults on the Kyiv Patriarchate and Protestant representatives.

Several Ukrainian Orthodox churches in the Luhansk region were damaged. In separate incidents, a Protestant orphanage was raided and a rehabilitation center seized.

In June 2014, pro-Russian militants reportedly tortured to death five Protestants in Slovyansk. In July, DPR militants seized and reportedly abused a Greek Catholic priest, whom they held captive for twelve days, and a Roman Catholic priest whom they held for eleven days. In August 2014, they took prisoner two Protestant pastors, beating one of them severely. In October, they held captive a Seventh-day Adventist pastor for twenty days and subjected him to similar abuse.

Whether in Crimea or eastern Ukraine, blame for these religious freedom violations must be laid at Moscow's doorstep and the world must escalate pressure on the Putin regime to alter its course. Successful Ukrainian military resistance to pro-Russian aggressors in the Donbas shows very clearly that when people's freedom is endangered, they will take a stand.

It is time for Putin to recognize that freedom, not oppression, is the path to cultural integrity and lasting security. Russia must embrace religious freedom at home while allowing its Ukrainian neighbors the same rights in their own land.

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