In late October, President Donald Trump announced that he was designating Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, or CPC, in recognition of the horrific and worsening rash of religious violence that Africa’s most populous country has faced in recent years. In fact, USCIRF has recommended Nigeria’s CPC designation every year since 2009, highlighting the dangers of violent extremist groups, tensions between ethnic Fulani herder communities and Christian and Muslim farmers, mass abductions of schoolchildren that have become shockingly commonplace, and other escalating threats. 

In this episode of USCIRF Spotlight, Supervisory Policy Analyst Kurt Werthmuller interviews Commissioners Maureen Ferguson and Mohamed Elsanousi to consider Nigeria’s designation as a CPC, the global and Nigerian response to that designation, and the road ahead for addressing the country’s ongoing religious freedom crisis.

The Chinese government under Xi Jinping placed an estimated one million Uyghurs in concentration camps, subjecting them to forced labor and other horrific abuses. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has also destroyed or modified mosques all as part of a “sinicization” policy to assimilate by force or to eliminate perceived non-CCP influences and ethnic minority communities. U.S. government responses have included sanctions; legislation, such as the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act; and the determination that the CCP is committing “genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.”

On this episode of the USCIRF Spotlight Podcast, Chair Vicky Hartzler speaks with Jewher Ilham, a Uyghur advocate, author, and filmmaker, and Adrian Zenz, Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.