FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 5, 2005

Contact:
Anne Johnson, Director of Communications, (202) 523-3240, ext. 27

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today is releasing Policy Focus: Eritrea. The policy brief includes specific recommendations for U.S. policy, including actions the State Department should take as a consequence of designating Eritrea a "country of particular concern," or CPC, under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). The Commission, in February 2004, publicly recommended for the first time that Eritrea be designated as a CPC. The State Department subsequently acted on that recommendation, designating Eritrea as a CPC on September 15, 2004.

"Although the 180-day deadline has passed to take action under IRFA, the State Department has yet to announce what policy steps it is going to take," said USCIRF Chair Preeta D. Bansal. "The Commission calls on the State Department to take action and has made some specific recommendations in that regard."

The Commission has found that the government of Eritrea engages in systematic and egregious violations of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief. The government of Eritrea has banned public religious activities by all religious groups that are not officially recognized, closed their places of worship, and inordinately delayed action on registration applications by religious groups. To suppress the religious activities of the unregistered groups, Eritrean security forces have disrupted private worship, have conducted mass arrests of participants at prayer meetings and other gatherings, and have detained those arrested without charge for indefinite periods of time.

In October 2004, the Commission sent a delegation to Eritrea to examine religious freedom conditions there and to gather information to aid in the development of recommendations for United States policy to promote freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief in Eritrea. Our findings and policy recommendations are included in the policy brief we are issuing today. They include:

· The U.S. government should engage in vigorous advocacy on religious freedom and other universal human rights at all levels of involvement with the government of Eritrea and draw international attention to religious freedom abuses in Eritrea, including in multilateral fora such as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights .

· The U.S. government should conduct a review of development assistance to Eritrea with the aim of redirecting such assistance to programs that contribute directly to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.Increases in other forms of development assistance should depend on measurable improvements in religious freedom.

Policy Focus: Eritrea can be found on the Commission's web site at www.uscirf.gov.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor the status of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief abroad, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international instruments, and to give independent policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State and the Congress.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 21, 2005

Contact:
Anne Johnson, Director of Communications, (202) 523-3240, ext. 27

WASHINGTON - Please join the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) for an on-the-record briefing regarding the troubling rise of religious intolerance in the Former Soviet Union, and efforts that are being made to combat it.

The discussion will feature a leading human rights advocate in Russia, Valentin Gefter, General Director of the Human Rights Institute, Moscow; and representatives of an innovative religious tolerance program operating in Russia, Colonel Boronbekov of Russian Law Enforcement (MVD), and Pnina Levermore, Executive Director of the Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal.

Mr. Gefter is currently in Washington, D.C. as a Galina Starovoitva Fellow at the Kennan Institute. Ms. Levermore is the founder of the Climate of Trust program, which is an exchange of Russian and American police officers, District Attorneys, judges and community leaders to promote tolerance and fight anti-Semitism in the Former Soviet Union. Colonel Boronbekov is the Russian Coordinator of the Climate of Trust program.

WHO:Colonel Sultonbek Boronbekov, Ms. Pnina Levermore, Mr. Valentin Gefter

WHEN: April 26, 2005, 2:00 - 3:30 p.m.

WHERE: U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
800 North Capitol St. NW, Suite #790
Washington, DC 20002

Please RSVP to Caroline Gobble at  [email protected] or (202) 523-3240, ext. 24.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor the status of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief abroad, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international instruments, and to give independent policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State and the Congress.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 21, 2005

Contact:
Anne Johnson, Director of Communications, (202) 523-3240, ext. 27

WASHINGTON - Please join us for an on-the-record briefing about the work of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), a non-partisan organization based in New Haven, Connecticut that seeks to remedy a deficit in the systematic, objective, and analytical documentation of human rights violations committed in Iran since the 1979 revolution. The presentation will focus on the deteriorating situation of religious freedom in Iran, especially the plight of religious minorities and Muslim dissidents.

In 2004, the U.S. Department of State provided $1 million in funding for the IHRDC through its Human Rights and Democracy Fund to "promote respect for human rights and democracy in Iran." Last month, the State Department announced it would provide grants in 2005 totaling $3 million for educational institutions, humanitarian groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals inside Iran to support the advancement of democracy and human rights.

The IHRDC was co-founded by Roya Hakakian, Ramin Ahmadi, and Payam Akhavan. Hakakian, a former television producer, is a documentary filmmaker and the author ofJourney from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran. Ahmadi is professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and founder of the Griffin Center for Health and Human Rights. Akhavan, a former Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda at the Hague, is an international human rights lawyer and Senior Fellow at Yale Law School and the Yale University Genocide Studies Program.

WHO:Roya Hakakian, Ramin Ahmadi, and Payam Akhavan, Co-Founders of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center

WHEN: 2:00 - 3:30 pm, Tuesday, May 3, 2005

WHERE: The Offices of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, 800 North Capitol Street, NW, Suite 790, Washington, DC 20002

** Seating is limited, so please RSVP by calling Caroline Gobble at (202) 523-3240 , ext. 24 or email [email protected] no later than Monday, May 2nd **

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor the status of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief abroad, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international instruments, and to give independent policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State and the Congress.