State Department names chief violators of religious liberty worldwide_20904

Posted: 2/06/04

State Department names chief
violators of religious liberty worldwide

By Rob Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)–The State Department's annual report on the status of religious freedom across the globe includes some familiar faces among its chief offenders.

According to the recently released report, China, Burma and North Korea remain among the world's most egregious and systematic violators of religious liberty. Meanwhile, several nations with close ties to the United States–such as Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Israel–continue to repress their citizens' religious freedom either through overt legal oppression or through unequal enforcement of laws that, on paper, protect religious freedom.

Highlighting five broad categories of ways in which nations suppress religious freedom, the report's executive summary listed nations that exemplify each:

Totalitarian or authoritarian regimes that attempt to control their citizens' religious belief or practice. Nations such as North Korea, Burma and Cuba continue to “regard some or all religious groups as enemies of the state because of the religion's content, the fact that the very practice of religion threatens the dominant ideology …, the ethnic character of a religious group or groups, or a mixture of all three,” according to the report.

Governments that exhibit official hostility toward minority or unapproved religions. Countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, “while not necessarily determined to implement a program of control over minority religions, nevertheless are hostile to certain ones or to factions of religious groups identified as 'security threats.'”

Governments that neglect in some cases to prevent discrimination against, or persecution of, minority religious groups. In states such as India, Egypt and Indonesia, the report says, “governments have laws or policies to discourage religious discrimination and persecution but fail to act with sufficient consistency and vigor against violations of religious freedom by non-governmental entities or local law-enforcement officials.”

Nations with legislation or policies that single out specific religions for discrimination. According to the report, Belarus, Israel and Russia are countries that “have implemented laws or regulations that favor certain religions and place others at a disadvantage.”

Nations with otherwise robust democracies that officially stigmatize religious minorities by “wrongfully associating them with dangerous 'cults' or 'sects.'” The report notes that government officials in many Western European nations–such as Belgium, France and Germany–have doggedly investigated minority groups such as Scientologists, even though their members or officials have not been found to have committed any crimes.

The report also noted that religious liberty “does not exist” in Saudi Arabia. It also said that the Saudi government in 2003 “continued to enforce a strictly conservative version of Sunni Islam and suppress the public practice of other interpretations of Islam and non-Muslim religions.”

John Hanford, U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom acknowledged that Saudi Arabia “has been very close to the threshold” for being designated a Country of Particular Concern, a designation reserved for gross violators of religious freedom. But rather than apply that label, the State Department has chosen to work with the Saudis toward improvements in religious freedom, he added.

Hanford also said, although Saudi law officially represses all religions except for a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam, other countries with more liberal laws on religious rights nonetheless repress their citizens' religious freedom far more violently than does Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has repeatedly recommended CPC designation for Saudi Arabia, and the State Department has repeatedly declined to confer it on the oil-rich kingdom, which has long had close ties to the U.S.

Hanford expressed concern about French President Jacques Chirac's support for a ban on Islamic headscarves and other public expressions of individual religious belief in French schools. Noting Chirac's declaration that the French principle of official government secularism is “non-negotiable,” Hanford said, “our hope is that religious freedom is non-negotiable as well.”

Ongoing development of Afghanistan's new constitution also concerned Hanford, particularly a clause in the first public draft of that document providing no Afghan law could be contrary to the principles of Islam.

“Who is going to interpret this clause, and how?” Hanford asked. “We want to be sure that we don't end up with 'Taliban lite'.”

The annual report is in its fifth year since the International Religious Freedom Act established both Hanford's office and the independent Commission on Religious Freedom.