WASHINGTON, DC – With the passing of Fidel Castro on November 25, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) urges the Cuban government to take a long hard look at his legacy, especially with regard to the oppressive treatment of religion which has marked the country’s history since Castro's rise to power in 1959. 

While USCIRF has noted that some improvements have been made in recent years in the area of religious freedom, our Annual Reports document the Cuban government’s continued violations. Areas of concern include: harassment of religious leaders and laity, interference in religious groups’ internal affairs, and preventing democracy and human rights activists from participating in religious activities. The government also has threatened to close and confiscate church properties and reportedly has demolished some churches.

“USCIRF hopes that the Cuban government will now act decisively to turn the page toward freedom,” said USCIRF Chair Rev. Thomas J. Reese, S.J.  “Despite constitutional protections, the government actively limits and controls religious practices through restrictive laws and policies, and surveillance and harassment. There is much that needs to change for the Cuban people, and Raul Castro and other Cuban officials should be judged by their actions.”

While USCIRF does not take a position for or against the U.S embargo of Cuba, as part of the U.S.-Cuba ongoing discussions, the U.S. government should continue to emphasize that the Cuban government needs to improve religious freedom conditions on the island.  

In its 2016 Annual Report, USCIRF recommends that the U.S. government should press the Cuban government to: stop arrests and harassment of religious leaders; end the practice of preventing democracy and human rights activists from attending religious services; cease interference with religious activities and religious communities’ internal affairs; allow unregistered religious groups to operate freely and legally and revise government policies that restrict religious services in homes or other personal property; lift restrictions on the building or repairing of houses of worship, holding of religious processions, importation of religious materials, and admittance of religious leaders; and hold accountable police and other security personnel for actions that violate the human rights of religious practitioners.

USCIRF placed Cuba on its Tier 2 list in its 2016 Annual Report. In Tier 2 countries, the violations the government engages in or tolerates are serious and characterized by at least one of the elements of the International Religious Freedom Act’s “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” standard. For more information, please refer to the Cuba chapter in USCIRF’s 2016 Report (in English and in Spanish).

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

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).