September 25, 2000
Religious freedom abusers cited
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--For the second straight year, the U.S. State Department listed Burma, China, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Serbia and the Taliban of Afghanistan as severe violators of religious freedom.
___Robert Seiple, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom at the State Department, listed the "countries of particular concern" just two days after the State Department released its second annual report on global religious freedom.
___The International Religious Freedom Act requires the president to take some action against those seven countries within 90 days. There is broad authority given to the president, however, to waive imposing any sanctions at all, but he must tell Congress why. Theoretically the president also could delay action for another 90 days, pushing the date past his term in office.
___The refusal this year to add any additional "countries of particular concern" drew sharp criticism from a 10-member independent commission also created under the two-year-old law.
___Seiple and members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom testified before House and Senate foreign-relations committees Sept. 7.
___In the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Seiple said the act establishes a "very high standard" for the designation of concern. A country must have engaged in or tolerated "systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom accompanied by flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty and security of persons, such as torture, enforced and arbitrary disappearances, or arbitrary prolonged detention."
___Seiple said the same seven nations listed last year merit the status again, but added, "After carefully reviewing these records, I have concluded that no other countries reach that standard." Secretary of State Madeleine Albright approved Seiple's recommendations, he said.
___However, Firuz Kazemzadeh, vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said the commission was disappointed that its advice to include four other countries was not heeded. The commission believes Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan should have been added to the list.
___Seiple spoke to Associated Baptist Press outside the Senate hearing room about the State Department's disagreement with the commission on listing the four additional countries. "In each case, we had diplomacy working," he said. "We had some significant breakthroughs, for instance in Laos, with prisoners being released."
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