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April 04, 2014
USCIRF Vice Chair Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett testified on Friday, April 4 before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission during a hearing entitled, "The Plight of Religious Minorities in India."
Click here to view the full written testimony.
March 26, 2014
USCIRF Commissioner Eric P. Schwartz testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission at a hearing entitled "The Persecution of Religious and Indigenous Communities in Vietnam."
Click here to view the full written testimony.
February 12, 2014
February 11, 2014USCIRF Commissioner Elliott Abrams testified before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at a hearing entitled "The Persecution of Christians as a Worldwide Phenomenon".
Click here to view the full written testimony.
March 24, 2020
Gender Identity:
female
Current Location:
Guangdong Women’s Prison
Perpetrator:
China
Ethnic Group:
Han
Faith:
Christian – Unspecified/Other
Birth Date:
1979
Appeal:
Denied
Sentence:
7 years imprisonment
Date of Detainment:
October/27/2014
Date of Conviction:
June/30/2015
Date of Sentencing:
June/30/2015
Current Status:
Not Released
Most Recent Type of Abuse:
Imprisonment
Yang Qiudi
Extra Bio Info:
Yang Qiudi, female, born in 1979, lives in Qingyuan City, Guangdong Province. At over 9 p.m. on October 27, 2014, she and her husband were surrounded and arrested by eight police officers at the door of their home and detained in Qingxin District Detention Center in Qingyuan City merely for their belief in Almighty God. On July 10, 2015, they were sentenced to 7 years in prison on the charge of organizing and using a xie jiao organization to undermine the enforcement of the law by Qingcheng District People’s Court of Qingyuan City under provisions like Paragraph 1 of Article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Law. On July 17, Yang Qiudi made an appeal to a higher court stating that the sentence was excessive but was dismissed, and the original judgment was upheld.
December 11, 2013
December 10, 2013
USCIRF Commissioner Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser testified before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at a hearing entitled "Human Rights Abuses in Egypt."
Click here to view the full written testimony.
June 26, 2013
June 25, 2013USCIRF Commissioner Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser testified before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizationsand theSubcommittee on the Middle East and North Africaof the House Foreign Affairs Committee at a hearing entitled "Religious Minorities in Syria: Caught in the Middle" on June 25, 2013.
Click here to view the full written testimony.
October 21, 2009
Testimony of
Leonard A. Leo
Before the
Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC)
on
Implications of the Promotion of "Defamation of Religions”
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this hearing on this important and timely issue. For a number of years, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has been monitoring closely, and speaking out against, the campaign by some countries to create a global blasphemy law through the passage of UN resolutions against the so-called "defamation of religions.”
While they may sound tolerant and progressive, these resolutions do not solve the very real problems of persecution and discrimination suffered by the adherents of many religions around the world. Rather, they exacerbate these problems. The "defamation of religions” concept promotes intolerance and human rights violations, creating wide latitude for governments to restrict free expression and religious freedom. In addition, the concept deviates sharply from the historically rooted object of international human rights protections by addressing the interests of religious institutions and interpretations, rather than the rights of individuals.
The "defamation of religions” resolutions have been sponsored annually by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or OIC, in the UN Human Rights Council and its predecessor since 1999, and in the General Assembly since 2005. At the Human Rights Council in Geneva, these efforts have been led by Pakistan. Egypt has played a leading role at the General Assembly in New York. The OIC"s publicly-stated goal is the adoption of a binding international covenant against the so-called "defamation of religions.”
Although the "defamation” resolutions purport to protect religions generally, the only religion and religious adherents that are specifically mentioned are Islam and Muslims. Aside from Islam, the resolutions do not specify which religions are deserving of protection, or explain how or by whom this would be determined. The resolutions also do not define what would make a statement defamatory to religions or explain who decides this question. For its part, the OICappears to deem any criticism of Islam or Muslims to be religiously defamatory speech-a view that goes well beyond the existing legal concept of defamation, which protects individuals against false statements of fact that damage their reputation and livelihood.
In terms of states' practices, there is no universal international approach toward "defamation of religions.” The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights conducted a survey in 2008 and found no common understanding of the concept among those countries that said they had laws on the issue. Instead, the laws surveyed addressed "somewhat different phenomena and appl[ied] various terms such as contempt, ridicule, outrage and disrespect to connote defamation.”
What should we glean from this narrow focus on Islam and the ambiguity of the applicable legal standard? For the Commission, it signals that the "defamation of religions” resolutions are a poorly veiled attempt to export the repressive blasphemy laws found in some OIC countries to the international level. Under these laws, criminal charges can be levied against individuals for defaming, denigrating, insulting, offending, disparaging, and blaspheming Islam, often resulting in gross human rights violations. In Pakistan, for example, the domestic law makes blasphemy against Islam a criminal offense subject to severe penalties, including death. Extremists have abused these broad provisions to intimidate members of religious minorities, including members of disfavored minority Muslim sects, and others with whom they disagree, and unscrupulous individuals have found them to be useful tools to settle personal scores. Blasphemy allegations in Pakistan, which are often false, have resulted in imprisonment on the basis of religion or belief, as well as vigilante violence resulting in the death of accused individuals.
The "defamation of religions” resolutions usually come before the UN General Assembly in the fall and the UN Human Rights Council in the spring, and they continue to pass each year in each body. Yet there is some good news to report: the international community is starting-though I would stress only starting-to understand the problems with these resolutions. The last three times they were considered the votes in favor decreased from a majority to a plurality of members. At both the March 2008 and March 2009 Human Rights Council sessions, as well as the December 2008 General Assembly, the combined number of no votes and abstentions outnumbered the yes votes, although the resolutions still passed. The Commission hopes that this trend will continue when the expected "defamation of religions” resolution comes before the General Assembly later this fall. To that end, we are working on a number of fronts, including with various Members of Congress, to encourage UN member states to oppose these resolutions. The Commission welcomed Secretary Clinton"s recent remarks in New York affirming the United States" continued opposition, and we urge the State Department to continue vigorously to engage all governments to urge them to vote no.
Like any smart tactician that detects a weakening of support, the OIC is diversifying its push for banning certain forms of speech by reaching into other venues and masking its objective through other language. The OIC sought, but failed, to insert language against the "defamation of religions” in the outcome document of the April 2009 Durban Review Conference. Instead, a compromise was reached to include a phrase deploring "the derogatory stereotyping and stigmatization of persons based on their religion or belief.” This is a somewhat better approach because it focuses on individuals, not religions, and does not attach legal prohibitions or punishments.
The OIC also has attempted to include the "defamation of religions” concept into UN resolutions dealing with the freedom of expression. At the most recent UN Human Rights Council session, the United States worked with Egypt to jointly sponsor a compromise freedom of expression resolution that sought to find common ground between the "defamation” proponents and opponents. Like the Durban II Conference document, this resolution does not mention "defamation of religions,” but rather focuses on negative religious stereotyping, thereby rightly keeping the focus on individuals rather than belief systems. It also does not call for any laws against such stereotyping, but instead expresses concern about it.
However, many in the human rights community were surprised by the United States" co-sponsorship of this resolution because it condemned "any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence” and called on states to "take effective measures, consistent with their international human rights obligations” to address such advocacy. Having just returned from Commission delegations to the European Union and Holy See, I know that many of our EU partners were equally surprised. The language on advocacy of hatred constituting incitement is taken from Article 20(2) of the International Civil and Political Rights, or ICCPR. Article 20(2) also requires states to enact laws against such incitement-a requirement on which the United States has placed a reservation to the extent that doing so would violate U.S. constitutional free expression guarantees. To be sure, the U.S./Egypt resolution does not expressly call for legal prohibitions, and therefore does not run afoul of the U.S's reservation, and the U.S. previously has supported UN resolutions on religious intolerance and discrimination that condemned incitement but did not require laws against it.
But the Commission is concerned that this use of the incitement language is a Trojan Horse for the "defamation of religions” efforts. The United States and other supporters of free expression therefore must remain vigilant against attempts to conflate "defamation of religions” and Article 20(2) incitement. In addition to seeking a new anti-blasphemy norm through the "defamation” resolutions, the OIC has argued in various UN contexts that speech insulting or criticizing religions is outlawed under existing international law norms against incitement-citing ICCPR Article 20(2).
Article 20(2) has always been and should continue to be a limited exception to the fundamental individual freedoms of expression and religion meant to protect individuals from violence or discrimination, not to protect religious beliefs from criticism. The United States should recognize that the defamation proponents' efforts to redefine and significantly broaden this provision are of serious concern.
National or international laws purporting to ban criticism or "defamation” of religions are not the solution to the very real problems of religious intolerance and discrimination. In fact, such prohibitions do more harm than good, as evidenced by the human rights abuses perpetrated under them in countries such as Pakistan. The United States should continue strongly to oppose, and urge other UN members to oppose, both the "defamation of religions” resolutions and all efforts to reinterpret ICCPR Article 20(2) to encompass allegedly religiously defamatory speech.
September 24, 2009
An excerpt from USCIRF chair Leonard Leo's testimony at the Prospects for Justice in Northern and Central Nigeria: Government Responses to Religious Extremism and Root Causes briefing
"The Commission concluded that the government of Nigeria has done little to prevent sectarian violence and that there have been no serious efforts to investigate or prosecute the perpetrators of the numerous sectarian killings and crimes that have occurred over the past ten years. On May 1, under the auspices of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, USCIRF recommended that Nigeria be named as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), a category designated for egregious abusers of religious freedom, which includes the concept of gross failure to act to prevent severe violations."Testimony
January 17, 2014
January 16, 2014USCIRF Chair Dr. Robert P. George testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission at a hearing entitled "Defending Freedoms: Highlighting the Plight of Prisoners of Conscience around the World."
Click here to view the full written testimony.
July 19, 2012
July 18, 2012USCIRF Chair, Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett testified on July 18, 2012 before the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission) at a hearing on Coptic Christians in Egypt.
Click here to view the written testimony.