FOR YOUR INFORMATION

August 21, 2013 | By Robert P. George and Katrina Lantos Swett

The following op-ed appeared in The Washington Post on August 21, 2013.

Although religious freedom is a pivotal human right, critical to national security and global stability, key provisions of the landmark International Religious Freedom Act are being neglected years after its passage. A number of studies demonstrates the link between freedom of religion and societal well-being, while its absence correlates closely with instability and violent religious extremism, including terrorism. Many governments, including those topping the U.S. foreign policy and security agendas, perpetrate or tolerate acts of religious repression, such as arbitrary detention, torture and murder.

The International Religious Freedom Act provides vital tools, including identifying and sanctioning the world's worst violators. But over many years and different administrations, the executive branch has not employed them fully or in a timely manner. With a key deadline for action arriving this month, it is time to confront this unwise failure to act.

When the act was passed in 1998, it made the promotion of religious freedom an official U.S. foreign policy priority and established at the State Department an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. The legislation also created a bipartisan and independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom , on which we serve, to monitor this right worldwide and make policy recommendations to Congress, the secretary of state and the president.

Congress gave the legislation real teeth through a groundbreaking enforcement mechanism: requiring annual administration review and designation of "countries of particular concern,” defined as those governments engaging in or allowing "systematic, ongoing, egregious” violations.

While the law provides the administration with flexibility in how it will pressure those countries, the review and designation process is not discretionary. The law requires it. Whatever one's view of appropriate sanctions for violators, there can be little disagreement on the imperative of bearing witness to abuses.

Unfortunately, neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have consistently designated countries that clearly meet the standard for offenders. The Bush administration issued several designations in its first term but let the process fall off track in its second. The Obama administration issued designations only once during its first term, in August 2011.

The result? Violators such as Egypt, Pakistan and Vietnam are escaping the accountability that the International Religious Freedom Act is meant to provide.

Even those nations currently designated as "countries of particular concern” could escape accountability if there are no designations this month; under the law, countries remain designated until removed, but any corresponding penalties expire after two years. Without new designations, sanctions attached in 2011 to Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea and Sudan will expire this month. And while those countries are subject to sanctions under other U.S. laws, allowing the International Religious Freedom Act's sanctions authority to expire would send the disturbing message that the United States won"t implement its own law on religious freedom.

To be sure, the Obama administration has taken some positive steps. It created a State Department working group on religion and foreign policy and this month established a new faith-based office , both tasked with religious engagement.

Also this month, Secretary of State John Kerry announced a U.S. Strategy on Religious Leader and Faith Community Engagement . As our commission has recommended, promoting religious freedom is among the three key objectives of this engagement.

Engagement should be part of any strategy for the promotion of religious freedom. But what will move gross offenders to stop persecuting individuals if not the credible threat of consequences? By letting the process of designating offenders atrophy, the United States surrenders its leverage while creating a chilling precedent for other rights. If this process is allowed to wither, what will happen to similarly designed programs such as the tiered system of the Trafficking in Persons Report, which was modeled on this approach?

The process of designating countries of particular concern works when deployed as intended - that is, not as a single bludgeon but as a targeted tool. When diplomacy is combined with the prospect or reality of such designations and attendant sanctions or other specific diplomatic and related actions, repressive governments - including Vietnam and Turkmenistan - have made meaningful changes. Moreover, countries often consider such a designation a stigma and blow to their world standing. Because a designation of concern is rightly perceived as an important factor in a country's relationships with the United States, it can create political will for reform where none otherwise would exist.

For the sake of freedom and security, it is time to apply the International Religious Freedom Act fully and the country designation process decisively. Congress has the right and the duty to press the executive branch to do so.

Robert P. George is chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Katrina Lantos Swett is a vice chairwoman of the commission.

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

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 16, 2013 | By USCIRF

USCIRF is deeply concerned by the violence against protestors and the targeting of churches in Egypt. The government's excessive use of force when breaking up protests, the high number of deaths, the return to a state of emergency, and the targeting of Christians by extremists are all profoundly troubling. USCIRF recognizes the grave issues at stake related to democracy, rule of law, and human rights in Egypt, and the Commission is particularly concerned about the immediate threats to religious minority communities.

"The level of violence against Coptic Christians, their property and businesses is unprecedented in modern Egypt, both in its scope and the number of churches and structures attacked,” said USCIRF Chairman Robert George. "This could portend even worse violence ahead if the situation is not brought under control. Assaulting religious minorities is not a legitimate form of protest against government action.”

Continued Chairman George, "Copts in particular, as well as other religious minorities, are among the most vulnerable to extremist reprisal violence. Thus far, churches have been attacked. But next could be indiscriminate violent acts targeting individuals and groups of Christians. USCIRF calls on the Egyptian government to immediately ensure the protection of places of worship and urges justice and accountability for perpetrators, both inside and outside of government. Impunity should not be allowed to prevail during such turbulent times.”

The Egyptian government confirmed that on August 14 more than 600 people were killed and thousands more injured after Egyptian security services dispersed a sit-in staged by former President Morsi's supporters. NGOs report that more than 50 Coptic Christian churches have been attacked across Egypt after the protest sites were cleared.

In USCIRF's 2013 Annual Report, the Commission recommended that Egypt be designated as a "country of particular concern” for particularly severe violations of religious freedom and that U.S. military aid be withheld until the Egyptian government has demonstrated it is implementing policies to protect freedom of religion and related human rights in Egypt. For more information, see the Annual Report's Egypt chapter, available here .

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at (202) 523-3258 or [email protected]

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

August 15, 2013 | By  Katrina Lantos Swett  and  M. Zuhdi Jasser

The following op-ed appeared in  The Moscow Times  on August 15, 2013 | Issue 5192

This month marks the 22nd anniversary of the "August putsch," in which hardline Communists held Soviet leader  Mikhail Gorbachev  under virtual house arrest for several days at his dacha in the Crimea. They sought to crush democratic reforms, including expanded autonomy for the Soviet republics. Who can forget  Boris Yeltsin  standing on a tank in defiance of the coup attempt, or the Soviet Union's dissolution several months later, leading to freedom and independence for the Soviet republics?


Yet a generation later, some of these republics are reminiscent of the old Soviet Union as they commit serious human rights violations, particularly through enacting and enforcing laws against freedom of religion or belief.
As the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, or USCIRF,  detailed in its 2013 annual report, the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan fit the congressionally established criteria for countries of particular concern, or CPC, marking them as some of the world's most egregious religious freedom abusers.

USCIRF has concluded that three more — Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia — are on the threshold of receiving CPC status because of their systemic failure to respect religious freedom and related rights.
Uzbekistan can fairly be viewed as Central Asia's heart of darkness. Among many other restrictions, its 1998 law on religion penalizes independent religious activity and applies vague anti-extremism laws against many Muslims and others who pose no credible security threat.

Under such laws, the government over the past decade reportedly has sentenced or imprisoned, sometimes in psychiatric hospitals, as many as 10,000 nonviolent individuals for terms of up to 20 years.
A USCIRF delegation visiting Tajikistan last December found that its government targets religious activity that is independent of state control and jails people on unproven criminal charges linked to their religious activity or affiliation. Such abuses affect the majority Muslim community and also religious minorities, particularly Protestants and Jehovah's Witnesses. 

Tajikistan's 2009 religion law and other statutes include stringent registration requirements for religious groups, criminalize unregistered activity, limit the number and size of mosques and impose state controls on publishing and importing religious literature. Turkmenistan's 2003 law on religion imposes similar hardships on religious groups. Turkmenistan remains the former Soviet Union's most isolated country, with major restrictions on foreign and domestic education, foreign travel and telecommunications.

The quasi-religious personality cult of the late Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov dominated the country's public life. Today, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov is building a cult of personality around himself. Criticism of the president is often tantamount to treason, and teachers and school children are compelled to spend many hours participating in numerous public parades in the president's honor.
 


Kazakhstan, once Central Asia's bright spot, now is following the lead of these three other Central Asian countries. Onerous registration requirements in Kazakhstan's 2011 religion law have led to a sharp drop in registered religious groups, including Muslim and Protestant groups. The law permits regional and local religious organizations to be active only in their geographic area of registration, requires official permission to build or open new places of worship and restricts the distribution of religious materials to a limited number of government-approved premises.


Since Azerbaijan's government enacted a restrictive religion law in 2009, its religious freedom record has worsened markedly. This nation, which has a Shiite Muslim majority, bans unregistered religious activities, limits religious activities to a community's registered address and requires government permission to produce, import, export and disseminate religious materials after such materials have passed state censorship.
 


Russia's 1997 law on religion defines three categories of religious communities with varying requirements, legal status and privileges. By singling out Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Orthodox Christianity as the country's four "traditional faiths," the preface to the law sets an official tone that encourages discrimination against Protestants and other religious minorities.

A USCIRF delegation noted deteriorating religious freedom conditions in Russia during its September 2012 visit. First, the government continues to violate the rights of so-called "nontraditional" religious groups and Muslims. Second, it has implemented an extremism law against religious groups and individuals not known to use or advocate violence, particularly Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslim reading circles focused on the works of Turkish theologian Said Nursi, whose books are banned across Russia. Third, Russia gives outward support for and preference to the Orthodox Church. In June, President  Vladimir Putin  signed a new blasphemy law with possible criminal penalties against those deemed to have "offended religious sensibilities," thus opening a potential Pandora's box of abuse.

Many of these measures recall the darkest days of the Soviet Union when its republics marched in lockstep. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan now all follow Soviet-style imprisonment of those refusing to worship according to state diktat. Soviet-style vetting to establish the legal status of religious literature is practiced by all six nations. The Soviet practice of subjecting religious dissenters to psychiatric evaluations continues, particularly in Uzbekistan.

While during the Soviet era, the false diagnosis of psychiatric illness was used against many who shared their belief in God, today the psychiatric profession is once again being hijacked — this time to persecute and falsely label those who reject a belief in a deity. For example, Alexander Kharlamov, an atheist writer in Kazakhstan, has been held against his will and forced to undergo psychiatric examination.

With the demise of the Soviet Union hastened by democratic opposition across the region a generation ago, we hoped that also meant the end of religious repression in that region of the world. But in too many post-Soviet states today, the ghost of Soviet control over peaceful religious life is alive and well.

Katrina Lantos Swett and M. Zuhdi Jasser are Vice Chairs of the U.S. Commission on International ­Religious Freedom.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact Kalinda Stephenson at 202-786-0613 or [email protected] This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .