FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 27, 2015 | USCIRF

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) expresses deep concern about reports this week in both Arabic and English language media that a General Court in Saudi Arabia sentenced to death a young Saudi man for apostasy.  According to multiple reports, the unidentified man allegedly posted a video of himself on a social networking site tearing pages from a Quran while making disparaging remarks.  The court used this video as evidence to convict him and justify the death sentence. 

“This conviction and death sentence fly in the face of international human rights protections, including the right to freedom of religion or belief, which includes the right to change religion or hold no beliefs.  The Commission strongly opposes any negative consequences for exercising these rights, while not condoning the desecration of religious texts,” said USCIRF Chair Katrina Lantos Swett.  “The government of Saudi Arabia should release this man and others who have been imprisoned and often are harshly treated for exerting their universally-protected rights to free expression and belief.”

“Along with this man, other prisoners of conscience in Saudi Arabia include blogger Raif Badawi and his lawyer, human rights defender Waleed Abu al-Khair, as well as Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani, a founding member of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), with whom USCIRF met while visiting the Kingdom in 2013,” said Lantos Swett.

The Saudi government persists in restricting most forms of public religious expression that it deems inconsistent with its particular interpretation of Sunni Islam.  Despite some improvements in recent years on religious freedom, restrictions and punishments continue against dissidents and non-conforming Muslims, including for apostasy, blasphemy, and sorcery.  The United States has designated Saudi Arabia for more than ten years as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, for its systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom.  Although Saudi Arabia has been designated a CPC, an indefinite waiver on taking any action in consequence of the CPC designation has been in place since 2006. 

For more information, please see USCIRF’s Saudi Arabia chapter in the 2014 Annual Report.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at [email protected] or 202-786-0613.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 27, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) strongly condemns the abduction of more than 200 Assyrian Christians by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in northeastern Syria and calls for the international community to work for their immediate release.

“The lives of these Assyrian Christians – including women, children and the elderly – hang in the balance: they were abducted solely because of their Christian faith,” said USCIRF Chair Katrina Lantos Swett.  “Let us be clear: these individuals are facing death.  They face the same fate as their Coptic Christian brothers who were brutally slaughtered by ISIL last month.”

"The United States and like-minded nations must redouble efforts to protect religious minorities, such as these Assyrian Christians, as well as others such as Yazidis, Shi’a Muslims, Sunnis who disagree with ISIL’s ideology and others targeted by this barbaric group.  The U.S. and the international community should work together to secure their release and provide humanitarian assistance to those who have been displaced,” continued Lantos Swett.

Last year, for the first time ever, USCIRF recommended that Syria be designated a “country of particular concern” (CPC) under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.

Click here for USCIRF’s work on ISIL and here for USCIRF’s 2014 Annual Report.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at [email protected] or 202-786-0613.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

February 26, 2015 | By Katrina Lantos Swett & Robert P. George

By all accounts, the past year in China was a punishing one for freedom of religion or belief.

In the name of fighting terrorism, officials increased their persecution of the Uighur Muslim community in the autonomous region of Xinjiang. In the name of fighting cults, they continued their assault on Falun Gong, unregistered Christian organizations, Buddhist groups and others. These examples of flagrant violations of religious freedom and fundamental human rights stand in sharp contrast to China’s preferred narrative of a modern, forward-looking superpower. Instead it reveals a one-party dictatorship fearful of diversity and hostile to freedom and faith.

Late last year, a Chinese court sentenced Ilham Tohti, a respected Uighur Muslim scholar, to life in prison for separatism. Known for peacefully advocating Uighur rights, Tohti was an economics professor in Beijing until his arrest in January of last year. Prior to this draconian sentence, China restricted Uighur rights to fast and carry out other religious observances during the month of Ramadan. This assault on religious freedom follows years of Chinese authorities’ raiding schools, seizing literature, shuttering religious sites, clamping down on the study of the Quran, monitoring imams’ sermons, restricting Muslim dress and religious expression and banning children from mosques.

China has also trained its sights on so-called cults, an arbitrary term that potentially includes any group operating outside the government’s orbit of strict regulation and control. Government officials stepped up the anti-cult campaign after a woman was beaten to death last May by six members of a group called Almighty God. Days later, the government published a list of 20 cults, and Chinese media warned repeatedly about their evil dangers.

Heading the list was Falun Gong, which has been in Beijing’s crosshairs for more than 15 years. Near the end of last year, Wang Zhiwen, a Falun Gong practitioner, finished a 15-year prison sentence, during which he was tortured, and then he was detained in a brainwashing center. He has been stripped of all political rights for four years and has not been getting needed medical care. Falun Gong practitioners Li Chang, Yu Changxin and Ji Liewu remain imprisoned. Over the years, human rights groups have reported deaths in custody, the use of psychiatric experiments and the harvesting of organs of Falun Gong members.

China’s anti-cult campaign also threatens unregistered, or underground, Christian churches. An article last year in a government newspaper warned that “underground churches and evil cults are spreading like mushrooms.” Even before this, China’s government issued a directive to “eradicate” unregistered Protestant churches over the next decade. Catholic and Protestant groups refusing to register have long faced arrests, fines and church closures. Pastor Yang Rongli has been serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence since 2009 for leading the 50,000-member Linfen Church in Shaanxi Province.

Such government hostility has gone beyond alleged cults. Starting in early 2014, Chinese Christians were faced with a new threat: assaults on registered churches. In Zhejiang province, the government targeted hundreds of churches, tearing down or removing crosses and even bulldozing a number of them, including Sanjiang Church, which had thousands of members. In Henan province, Pastor Zhang Shaojie of the Nanle County Christian Church was convicted on July 4 on groundless charges of fraud and gathering a crowd to disturb public order and was handed a 12-year prison sentence.

Besides Falun Gong and Christianity, Chinese anti-cult efforts also harass movements within Buddhism. Late last year, China arrested Wu Zeheng — also known as Zen master Shi Xingwu, a renowned leader with millions of followers worldwide — along with more than a dozen of his followers in China. They were charged under China’s anti-cult law barring people from forming or using “superstitious sects or … societies … to undermine the implementation of the laws and … rules and regulations of the state.” If convicted, each could serve from seven years to life in prison.

These actions are on top of China’s continued suppression of Tibetan Buddhism, which has been led to an alarming number of self-immolations. In recent years, more than 130 Buddhists, including monks and nuns, have set themselves ablaze.

Through its conduct, China is denying its people the internationally guaranteed right to believe or not believe according to conscience. Why? Perhaps its leaders fear that allegiance to organizations beyond the Chinese state threaten their control. For example, Ye Xiaowen, a former head of China’s Religious Affairs Bureau, voiced what many Chinese officials fear: that Christians’ role in bringing down communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s could be repeated in China.

But ironically, repression can exacerbate the extremism it aims to eradicate. Furthermore, targeting peaceful religious communities deeply undermines the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of all its citizens.

Above all else, the Chinese government seeks stability. It will find this an elusive goal as long as it continues to violate the basic rights of millions of its citizens.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at [email protected] or 202-786-0613.