March 20, 2012 | by USCIRF

WASHINGTON, D.C. -The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a federal government commission that monitors global religious freedom, today released its 2012 Annual Report and recommended that the Secretary of State name the following nations "countries of particular concern” or CPCs: Burma, China, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.* The report can be found at: here.

"It's no coincidence that many of the nations we recommend to be designated as CPCs are among the most dangerous and destabilizing places on earth,” said USCIRF Chair Leonard Leo. "Nations that trample upon basic rights, including freedom of religion, provide fertile ground for poverty and insecurity, war and terror, and violent, radical movements and activities.”

The 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) requires that the United States designate annually as CPCs countries whose governments have engaged in or tolerated systematic and egregious violations of the universal right to freedom of religion or belief. IRFA also tasked USCIRF with assessing conditions in these and other nations and providing policy prescriptions for ways the U.S. government can constructively engage.

"In addition, some of the countries we recommend for CPC designation maintain intricate webs of discriminatory rules, requirements and edicts that can impose tremendous burdens for members of religious minority communities, making it difficult for them to function and grow from one generation to the next, potentially threatening their existence,” added Leo.

In Egypt, the transitional government has failed to protect religious minorities, especially Coptic Christians, from violent attacks at a time when minority communities have been increasingly vulnerable.

"These governments too often stand idly by in the face of violent attacks against religious minorities and dissenting members of majority faiths,” says Leo. "Inseparable from freedom of expression and association, freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief often is the first human right threatened by tyranny.”

Iran and China remain gross abusers of human rights and among the world"s worst religious freedom violators. Iran continues to detain, torture, and execute its citizens, and in the past year, Baha"is, Christians, and Sufi Muslims have been subjected to intensified attacks, harassment, detention, and imprisonment.

In China -- the only CPC designee with a seat on the United Nations Security Council - conditions for Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims are the worst in decades and in the past year, Beijing has stepped up its crackdown on Protestants and Catholics. Dozens of unregistered Catholic clergy, for example, remain in detention or have disappeared.

USCIRF's Annual Report highlights the mistreatment of Ahmadis, Hindus and Christians in Pakistan, Buddhists in Vietnam and China, and Baha'is in Iran and Egypt. The report repeatedly notes the brutal assaults endured by Christians seeking to practice their faith peacefully. Muslims, too, suffer in Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, and non-Muslim nations like Russia and Burma. The Annual Report also calls attention to the promotion of anti-Semitic bigotry in countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

USCIRF also announced that the following countries are on its 2012 Watch List: Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, and Venezuela. While not rising to the statutory level set forth in the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) requiring CPC designation, Watch List countries require close monitoring due to the nature and extent of religious freedom violations these governments have engaged in or tolerated.

Due to the provisions of P.L. 112-75, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom Reform and Reauthorization Act of 2011, USCIRF this year felt compelled to accelerate and compress its process of preparing its Annual Report. The new law that reauthorized the Commission calls for five of the nine Commissioners to terminate their service on March 21, 2012, leaving the possibility of no quorum after that date. Faced with the strong possibility of a substantially delayed Annual Report or none at all, the Commission opted to issue the Annual Report in March rather than just prior to May 1. With a marked deterioration of conditions for religious freedom around the world, the Commission believes it would have been unsatisfactory to countenance a significant delay, or to skip a report for 2012 altogether. Too much is at stake for international religious freedom.

*Four Commissioners dissented from the recommendation that Turkey be designated a CPC. Their views are contained in the Annual Report.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, contact Paul Liben at [email protected]  or (703) 870-6041.

March 6, 2012 | by USCIRF

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) deeply mourns the loss of Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), a longtime advocate of human rights, including the right to freedom of religion, who passed away this morning in Livingston, New Jersey.

"For more than a generation, Donald Payne was a committed champion in Congress for oppressed people, especially those in Africa, whose fundamental rights, including religious freedom, were being trampled upon,” said USCIRF Chair Leonard Leo . "From Sudan to Eritrea, Ethiopia to the Ivory Coast and elsewhere, Representative Payne spoke truth to power, working with USCIRF and like-minded advocates to hold the abusers of human freedom and dignity accountable. My colleagues and I offer our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends. Representative Payne will be sorely missed.”

Elected to Congress in 1988, Representative Payne was the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights. In 2001, he was arrested for chaining himself to the gates of the Sudanese Embassy to protest the regime's brutal treatment of civilians in Darfur. Representative Payne also helped highlight the plight of Christians, animists, and non-conforming Muslims victimized by the efforts of the Sudanese regime in Khartoum to impose its extremist ideology on the nation.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, contact Paul Liben at [email protected] or (703) 870-6041.

For Your Information

July 3, 2012| by Katrina Lantos Swett

The following op-ed appeared in Stars and Stripes on July 3, 2012 at www.stripes.com/honor-july-4-by-upholding-first-freedom-1.182008 .

As we celebrate our Declaration of Independence, we are reminded of its powerful proclamation of freedom.

Freedom includes many things but, at its core, it is the right to think as we please, believe or not believe as our conscience dictates, and live out our convictions openly and peacefully. In other words, freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief is central to who we are.

Yet, according to a Pew Research Center study released in August 2011, fully 70 percent of the world"s people live in countries where religious freedom and related rights are severely restricted. Those include some of the most repressive environments in the world.

In China, religious groups that are not approved by the government - from the Falun Gong to the house church movement - are ruthlessly suppressed, while officials crack down brutally on Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims.

In In Iran, an extremist theocracy detains, tortures and executes those who dissent from its dictates. The government targets reformers among the Shiite Muslim majority, as well as members of religious minorities, including Sunni and Sufi Muslims, Baha"is and Christians, and its officials aggressively promote Holocaust denial and other forms of hatred against Jews.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, on which I serve, has successfully recommended that these and a number of other nations with similar records be designated as "countries of particular concern.” deeming them among the world"s most serious religious freedom violators.

In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including Article 18, which states the following: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, alone or in community with others, and, in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

In 1966, the governments of 156 countries signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which includes similar words and which the United States ratified in 1992.

Concerned that these agreements were being flouted, and that America"s foreign policy was failing to respond, Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed into law, the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998. IRFA created USCIRF, as well as a religious freedom office with its own ambassador in the State Department.

In taking that action, our country reaffirmed our Declaration of Independence"s insistence that every freedom, including religious freedom, is an unalienable human right.

Research also finds that, across the globe, religious freedom is correlated with robust political democracy, diminished tension and violence, and greater prosperity and stability.

In contrast, nations that abuse religious liberty are often incubators of intolerance and extremism, poverty and insecurity, and violence and further repression.

Thus, standing for freedom of religion or belief isn"t just a legal or moral obligation, but a practical imperative, one that is tied to our own well-being and that of the world.

This is especially important in the post-9/11 world, where the key to countering terrorism, along with its tyranny and violence, is to persuade people not to become terrorists in the first place. But in order to succeed, we must offer a competing vision of liberty, one that holds open the real promise of a peaceful, prosperous way forward.

Backed by international law and treaty, made indispensable by our critical security needs, and supported by our Declaration of Independence, the world"s first freedom deserves our steadfast commitment.

Katrina Lantos Swett is chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner please contact Samantha Schnitzer at [email protected] or (202) 786-0613.