17 nations named ‘particularly severe’ religious-freedom violators
May 01, 2015
In its newly released annual report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is urging the State Department to designate or redesignate 17 nations as “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) because they are nations in which “particularly severe violations of religious freedom are perpetrated or tolerated.”
The nations are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, the Central African Republic, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, and Vietnam.
The federal commission found that ten other nations-- Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia, Russia, and Turkey-- “engage in or tolerate violations that are serious but not CPC-level.”
In addition, the commission expressed concern about the state of religious freedom in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cyprus, Kyrgyzstan, and Sri Lanka.
“All nations should care about abuses beyond their borders not only for humanitarian reasons but because what goes on in other nations rarely remains there,” said Katrina Lantos Swett, who chairs the commission. “In the long run, there is only one permanent guarantor of the safety, security and survival of the persecuted and vulnerable. It is the full recognition of religious freedom.”
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