Panel warns religious freedom at risk in Afghanistan_51903

Posted: 5/19/03

Panel warns religious freedom at risk in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON–An independent panel warned May 13 that religious freedom in Afghanistan is perilously at risk unless the U.S. government presses for greater human rights protections.

In its annual report to Congress, the president and the State Department, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said Afghanistan could again become a repressive Islamic state unless Washington intervenes.

“There are indications that Afghanistan is being reconstructed–without serious U.S. opposition–as a state in which an extreme interpretation of Sharia (Islamic law) would be enforced by a government which the United States supports and with which our nation is closely identified,” the nine-member panel warned.

The watchdog panel called for increased security to guarantee human rights, as well as secular courts to prevent “misguided judicial activism” and a commitment to make sure “punishments such as flogging, amputation of limbs and death by stoning are banned.”

The commission also rebuked Saudi Arabia, one of America's closest allies in the Middle East, for restricting non-Muslim faiths.

“The commission shares the State Department's view that freedom of religion does not exist in Saudi Arabia and notes that advancing human rights, including religious freedom, has not been a public feature” of U.S. diplomacy, the panel said.

The commission, which was chartered by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, monitors religious freedom issues and advises the government on ways to weave those concerns into foreign policy.

The panel chided the State Department, however, for ignoring many of its recommendations, particularly adding Saudi Arabia to a list of “countries of particular concern” for its human rights policy.

In March, Secretary of State Colin Powell named six countries–Burma, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Sudan–as countries of particular concern for their “systematic, ongoing and egregious” violations of religious freedom.

The watchdog commission wants Powell to add six more countries–India, Laos, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam–to the list, as well as naming Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria and Uzbekistan to a “watch list.”